


Mokona Star

by sciencemyfiction



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: (as in not safe for newbies), Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-typical blood-letting, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, KuroFai Olympics, M/M, NSFN, Prompt: Vampire/Werewolf, Team Space, also did you know belly rubs are a thing, implied abuse (neglect), they're in here I promise, they're the best part about this prompt, weird mental stuff???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-28
Packaged: 2020-09-23 20:30:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 27,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20346268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sciencemyfiction/pseuds/sciencemyfiction
Summary: Kurogane woke up in space, but it wasn’t therightspace. Now he's caught up in a whirlwind of trouble with aliens the likes of which he'd never even contemplated, and what's worse, it seems like his lunar cycle is completely out of whack out here.All he wants is to get home, but he's not sure that wish will ever come true.*Update: Final chapter posted! Thanks for your patience! (it was actually two chapters whoops)





	1. Before

In the wine-dark ocean of stars, he was created  
and re-created  
and re-created  
and re-created  
infinitely.

And his life was stretched across such an unfathomable time that, almost, he could forget that he was alive at all. 

His home was a blazing desert in the center of a scarred and aching star system: fourth of five planets, and the last world still inhabited after devastating interplanetary war. That which had originally been him, the person whose consciousness he bore, was called Yui. 

But he couldn’t help but notice that his creators, 

_ those most voracious and terrible beings of light_   
_whose appetite could never be sated_  
_ and for whom all the pleasures of life were only memory_

did not call him by this name. 

"It is the name of a person," he was told, when he wondered why. "But you are not a person, you are _Fai._" 

"Why?" 

“That is what we call you: that is what you are." 

"Who is 'Fai'?"

"You mean to say, '_What'._" 

He did not. But, he understood that they meant to say that his name was his function and he did not want to think about it. Resigned to existing as _Fai_, with only distant memories to suggest that once he had been more, he buried himself in his work, his duties, as much as possible. It was a miserable thing, to be created and expendable, and to feed an entire planet was not really meant to be a one-person-job. Still, he treated the appointment with gravitas, working tirelessly to fulfill his duties, no matter how he loathed them. More often than not, he never had time or space to himself. 

In the few rare moments of peace he did find, Fai dreamed of what it might have been like to be anyone else. 


	2. The Message

Everything began with the message. It was broadcast everywhere and everywhen, repeating forever in such a manner that only very specific people heard it. It could be picked up by receivers of any kind. Some saw a visage, a pale and otherworldly creature wreathed in black and red rings of smoke. Some heard a voice that spoke a language none knew, yet all understood. 

She said: 

_ Come to me. We’re out of time, and it is not safe, but I have a ship. _

_ I can send you anywhere you wish to go. _

_ I can offer you safe passage, but only once. _

And she was heard by everyone.


	3. I was lost

Kurogane woke up in space, but it wasn’t the _right_ space. (He didn’t notice that immediately, however, as there were other, more pressing concerns.) His legs and arms felt heavy, painfully numb from long hours sitting unconscious. Alarms were blaring all around him. **LOW OXYGEN** and **IMPACT DETECTED** and **COMMUNICATIONS UNAVAILABLE**. Also, the power core had overheated. Also also, the navigational array was down. 

The ship shook, and Kurogane grunted in pain. He struggled to make a fist with his left hand; then he did it again, hissing at the pins and needles of fresh flowing blood; and again, until he felt things moving as they ought. He checked on his oxygen reserves first and found the source of his troubles was a damaged tank on his space suit. Spares, he knew, were within reach. So, muddy-headed and sore, he made himself unbuckle the harness keeping him fastened within his seat, and replaced the damaged tank with an undamaged one. He took a deep breath, and then several more, till the edge of nausea faded away. 

Then he looked over the ship’s sensor imaging logs, trying to determine where the impact had occurred, how bad it was. There were several, actually, but the main one seemed to be near the power core, and from the look of things, his hull had been cracked by whatever-it-was. Heat from re-entry? No, he was still in space. A collision with the station?

Kurogane took the time to float down into the engine room, and carefully patched over the entire wall by hand, using a tub of wet, plaster-like alloys Tomoyo had invented for just such an occasion. Internally, he told himself he would remember to thank her for inventing 'palladium putty' when he got back to the station. Externally, he scowled. The silvery-white gunk stuck to his palms when he'd finished, and no amount of rubbing them together seemed to dislodge the residue from his suit. It had a consistency like clay. 

Eventually, he resigned himself to having silvered gloves for now. Kurogane was fairly confident the patching job would hold even if the outer hull cracked through, at least. That left him room to focus on more important problems. After all, he still needed to figure out why the core had overheated in the first place. 

Piloting, negotiations and hull repairs, Kurogane could do without breaking a sweat. This, though, was much less in his comfort zone. He might technically be able to restart the fizzled out engine alone, but if it was at all possible...

“Tomoyo?” Kurogane tried, fiddling with the communications relay built into his suit. Regrettably, the alert seemed accurate: no response came, not even static.

So much for their test flight. 

The power core was a marvel of engineering and Tomoyo had been looking forward to showing it off for almost a year. Fueled by the five elements and an arcane sigil, the core was supposed to be a source of continual energy so long as it remained in orbit of the planet, drawing from each of its elemental sources with every rotation around the planet that Kurogane made. It was a marvel of technology and arcane application, and Tomoyo had promised her mother that the thing could keep Kariq station in orbit for the foreseeable future. 

Kurogane had expected the prototype to have a few bugs to work out, but this was a lot worse than that. From the look of things, the core was all but dead, now. The brief log he found didn’t tell him much. Apparently the engine had activated for his test run, then completely outperformed anything Tomoyo had ever planned, shorting itself out about five minutes later. He did remember, vaguely, the look of surprise on Tomoyo’s face, the instant before he’d been knocked unconscious. He could only assume the ship had stopped moving so suddenly that he'd hit his head on something. 

The core’s massive energy output had _thankfully_ shunted out of the exhaust ports as it ought, instead of into the cockpit, where it could so easily have turned Kurogane into a crispy corpse. But now, it sat silent. The enchantment had been misaligned and its fuel reserves were curiously empty. And he was alone to figure out 'why', even though this was the farthest thing from his specialty. 

“Great,” he sighed, and clambered back up out of the engine room. “Stranded me in low orbit right before a full moon. Thanks, Tomoyo.”

It didn't really help him feel as better as he'd hoped, but Kurogane made the nest of it and got to work. Once he’d made it up to his seat again, he focused on repairing the receiver for his communicator. When the one in his suit failed to work after resoldering a wire twice, he decided to check the ship’s internal relay, which had apparently been popped out of place by the impact. Annoyed but tentatively hopeful, Kurogane popped the whole thing back in, hooked on the protective plate that covered it, and let out a sigh of relief when the alert finally turned off. 

“Hey, is anybody listening? Hello?” 

Kurogane fiddled once or twice with his receiver, and considered checking the navigational system, to try to figure out which side of the planet he was on. Kariq might, he reasoned, be out of range. And _that_ was when he noticed where he was (or wasn’t). 

It was also when his ship crashed, very gently considering its residual inertia, into a structure that Kurogane would later be forced to call a space station, even though it was neither stationary nor technically in space, and did not, in his opinion, deserve the name.


	4. And I don't know anything

This time, when Kurogane awoke, his helmet had fallen off. The front of the ship had been smashed open, and he could see it smeared along the outside of a strange, glowing blue barrier below. It sort of looked as if his ship had melted on contact with the blue stuff, which did little to reassure him that he wasn't about to die in a few seconds. The cockpit, in fact, was hanging open, with Kurogane dangling above what seemed to be a hatch, some thirty feet down. Under the hatch yawned the seemingly unfiltered void of deep space. Only a faint shimmer of blue light gave him the answer to why he wasn't already dead; there was, apparently, some membrane keeping the atmosphere and pressure steady. At least, there was for now. 

A chill ran down his spine, and he undid the harness keeping him from falling face first into the emptiness. His helmet was spinning about halfway between where he hung and that hatch down there. He swallowed down the unease, braced himself with knees bent and one arm against the bottom lip of his chair, and kicked, trying to send himself down to the hatch in a single, swift motion. 

He had some luck, but missed the handle with his hand. Correcting, he hooked a foot under the wheel of it, and slowly pulled himself down. Here, he felt ever more aware of how little stood between him and the vastness of space. He didn't dare try to linger, lest the membrane pop like a bubble and leave him gasping out his last breath. With teeth grit, he gripped the hatch's wheel, spun it, and pulled on the door with all he had. 

It came open after a moment or two, and Kurogane hung on, carefully crawling inside around it, then pulling the thing shut behind him. For now, panic and confusion and muzziness were more important than wondering where he was, or what was happening. It was enough not to have to stare out into space and worry he was about to experience it in full. When he'd sealed the door, an artificial gravity sucked his feet down to rest on the floor. He felt dizzy, a little shaky, maybe, but mostly relieved to be alive.

"Hello?" he called out, moving toward the opposite side of the hatch, and laying a gloved hand on its smooth surface. There was no wheel here to match the hatch's otherwise familiar design, but the wall gave way beneath his touch. It was warm and spongy, like a twisted parody of flesh. He tried not to think about that. 

"_Greetings, Guest #495001. Please state name and planet of origin,_" said a voice he did not recognize, in a language he was sure he did not know. 

Somehow, the meaning still parsed through his mind, with a delay he barely noticed. Kurogane felt an uneasy lurch in the pit of his stomach. The overall weirdness of, well, _everything_ was starting to catch up to him. 

"What? I'm- what?"

"_Understood, What. You shall be registered as What, guest 495001, of planet Aymwat. Please proceed to the registration desk with all other new personnel._"

He snarled indignantly, and pulled his hand free, pounding the weird, springy wall with a fist in reprimand. 

"My name isn't 'what', it's Kurogane. Where am I? What happened?"

There was no answer; but when he laid his palm impatiently back on the blue substance, it collapsed: first just a slight indentation; then, like a seam had ripped, it began peeling apart, revealing a corridor that connected to three others. Straight ahead, he could just barely make out the overgrown ruin of a biodome, its glass shattered by questing plant tendrils. The walkways looked abandoned, and only emergency lighting flickered overhead. 

Kurogane swallowed down the urge to demand answers from the air. Excepting the dead-end behind him that served as- apparently -a docking hatch, he had three choices. To his left and right, mystery; ahead, the biodome gone wrong. He didn't like any of them, but he wasn't feeling especially excited to return to the husk of his ruined ship, either. 

So, he turned right and started walking. 

While the walls were similar to the glowing blue ones he'd seen in the hatch, the colors were constantly shifting in ripples and waves. The light they gave off was faint, like bioluminescent fungus in an undersea cave. Above, the corridor's ceiling was ridged with bony support beams, regularly interrupted by fixtures whose function he could only guess at. The walls were engraved with unfamiliar patterns, some of which moved in slow counterpoint to the colors, while others sat in a static configuration and emitted periodic bursts of brighter light. He couldn't tell if the patterns were doors or decoration, and started slowing down as he tried to take it all in, and couldn't bring himself to hurry. After all, he wasn't sure where he was going, or why he felt compelled to rush. 

It was terrifyingly silent at first, aside from the sounds of his own body: heartbeat in his ears, raspy breath, uncertain footsteps. But as he continued down the hall he began to catch the echoing sound of someone, or something, else. First it was footsteps, much faster and louder than his. Then he thought he caught the sound of a voice, mumbling to itself. Whoever or whatever they were, they were somewhere ahead and, from the sound of things, not quite coming his way. Following his instincts, Kurogane paused at the next intersection of corridors, and peered around the third corridor, toward the biodome. Sure enough, a small figure was there, walking toward the plants with somewhat less caution than he would've said was the appropriate amount, all things considered. 

The figure seemed like a fellow Lycan, at first glance. Or, well, if Kurogane shut off the part of his mind screaming _what the fuck is going on where am I_ for a moment, he could recognize this person as a person, anyway. (This was oddly reassuring.) But, this person also had long, ephemeral antennae and spiky fins along the undersides of their arms and legs, and the flash of pink, gold and white on their scaled skin seemed especially suited to the murky hallway and its bioluminescent glow. Whoever they were, they looked right at home, here. He had no guarantee they'd be able to understand him, let alone that they would be friendly. It might be possible to shift into a more combat-ready shape before they reached him, should that prove necessary, but he didn't like going into a fight blind, and he was out of practice, besides. 

As Kurogane lingered there, trying to make a decision, the small figure stopped, suddenly, and said,

"Say, um. Let's not fight?" Their antennae twitched, and when they turned around, he was startled to see the face of a child, wreathed in bright red hair. They had large, green eyes and a countenance of positivity that reminded him strongly of Tomoyo. When they saw him, they smiled. "Oh! You don't look half as scary as I thought you would. Can we be friends? I'm Sakura!"

"Kurogane," Kurogane said, struggling with the simultaneous urge to demand this stranger keep their distance and to protect them with life and limb. He was feeling dizzy again. "Where are we?"

"I think it's an abandoned space station?"

"And...what are you?"

Sakura stamped their foot, and made a face at the question as if it was rude. 

"I'm a teraph! Haven't you ever seen a teraph before?"

Kurogane felt at a loss to answer, having never really felt the need to explore the possible existence of entire abandoned space stations and planets and races of people he didn't know about. Instead, he shrugged helplessly, hoping that would convey the sentiment better than words could. 

To Sakura's credit, they seemed surprised, then grew thoughtful. They scrunched up their nose and squinted at him for a bit. Assuming they were judging him, he couldn't have said whether they found him satisfactory or not. He had no idea what it was they were looking for. After a few moments, Sakura only grumbled, crossing their arms over their chest in resigned acceptance. 

"Well, fine. I guess you haven't. What are _you_, then?"

"A lycan? A pilot." 

"And you're lost," Sakura said. They took a step in his direction, and he involuntarily flinched. Whatever a ‘teraph' was, Kurogane had never seen anything like this before. Just because Sakura seemed small and friendly didn't mean they weren't also dangerous, after all, and if this was a trap, Kurogane had far too little space to change forms and fight back. 

But Sakura's face didn't look so different from a lycan to him, he supposed. Sakura had frozen mid-step, and he _thought_ they looked contrite. He could understand what they were saying, too, that had to count for something. So, he tried to relax, and cleared his throat. 

"Lost, huh? ...Yeah. I guess you're right."

Sakura nodded encouragingly. 

"I'm lost, too! I don't even know where my brother-in-law got to, I imagine he's probably pretty worried about me by now."

Making a mental note that Sakura had a brother, Kurogane wondered what exactly Sakura was in the business of doing. While Kurogane was wearing the somewhat bulky blue and black suit Tomoyo had designed for piloting their prototype, Sakura's clothing seemed more suited to civilian life. Loose pants, no shoes, a sleeveless shirt with no combative properties at first glance-they didn't look prepared to explore or to conquer. So why were they in space at all? 

"How did you get here?"

"I don't exactly know! I was being chased by a whole fleet of ships and had a vision of this. This _lady_, I guess? But she said to come here. I could- I don't know. _Feel_ her pulling me here, to this place. So, I closed my eyes and just sort of followed that feeling. And then wham! Here I was!" 

He supposed Sakura must've then, at some point, crashed into the station as well. The sequence of their story didn't ring any bells for him, though. He had neither seen nor heard Sakura's mystery woman in the moments preceding his crash. There were no clues he could latch onto to figure out how he'd been brought here, assuming something similar had happened to the two of them. 

"What did this woman want from you? What did she say?"

Sakura turned around, and pointed at the biodome. 

"She wanted me to go there, I think. She said she could offer me safe passage, and I definitely need that. I guess I wouldn't have tried to come here, otherwise."

It all made about as much sense as a hallucination, or a dream. But, if he was in the middle of dreaming, he supposed that what he did wouldn't ultimately matter, so things didn't have to make sense, really. And if he wasn't asleep somewhere and imagining all of ..._this_, then he needed to figure out how he'd been brought here, where here was, and how to get home, in that order. 

_And why_, if at all possible, though Kurogane doubted he knew how to get the answer. 

"Kurogane?" 

Sakura was looking at him as if they'd been trying to say his name for a while, now. He repressed the urge to correct their pronunciation. They were doing admirably for someone who clearly didn't know how to say it, and there were more important things to talk about. 

"What?"

"Um, I was asking if you- uh, if the same thing happened to you. But you've just been staring at me." 

It seemed strange to him that he'd managed not to hear any of that. He wondered faintly if maybe he was dissociating or something. Time felt kind of strange to him too, as if it was racing whenever he wasn't looking and crawling every time he put it under scrutiny. Swallowing down a little bit of bile and unease, Kurogane grunted and tried to apologize.

"Sorry. Thinking."

"Are you okay?"

"Fine," Kurogane lied, unconvincingly.

Sakura's eyes filled with worry and they clasped their hands together. It was charming, somehow; it grounded him. Sakura reminded him of Tomoyo, and working with Tomoyo had taught him quite a bit about owning up to shit, even when he wasn't comfortable. Kurogane sighed, and tried to put all of it into words. 

"Not really fine. Just...Huh. Just not sure if this is real. Also, I crashed, or something. Can't call for help or let everyone know I'm okay. Still not sure how I even got here. Ah, and. Processing that there's other life in the universe than Lycans."

"Oh," Sakura said softly. "I'm sorry, that does sound very confusing."

"Don't worry about it." (It wasn't, after all, as though there was much they could do about it.)

"Well, hm. Do you want to come with me? Try to find the lady I saw in my vision? Maybe she could help you, too."

A fresh wave of dizziness swept over him, far more intense than what he'd been feeling before, and Kurogane leaned hard into the nearest wall. It was worse when he closed his eyes, as if the ground was pitching and wheeling. He clenched his fists, telling himself to _suck it up_, and breathed in through his nose until his lungs felt like they'd burst. It took a few more slow, deep breaths before he felt steady enough to open his eyes again, and when he did, Sakura was very close indeed, looking up at him but maintaining a respectful distance. They politely waited, in fact, as if there had been no delay at all in his answer. 

So Kurogane didn't acknowledge what'd happened aloud, because he couldn't make sense of why it was happening. He just said, 

"Yeah, let's go find her. Not like I got any better ideas, here."

As the last dregs of his mysterious vertigo eased off, Kurogane pushed himself away from the wall, and the two of them turned back to the biodome. Even if he took Sakura's story about a vision and a woman completely at face value, he had a hard time imagining anybody living in a place like this. The doors leading into the dome had been knocked out of place, and one lay on the corridor's floor, the other leaning against the cracked outer wall. 

"Where exactly did this woman say she was, again?"

Sakura laughed awkwardly, their antennae flittering back and forth as they thought about how to reply. 

"She didn't, really? I only followed what I could sense; I haven't met her in person, yet."

"Great," Kurogane said, even though that was decidedly _un_great. "Why here, then?"

"I don't know. I just have a feeling."

_Wonderful. They have a feeling_, he thought with a sigh, stepping past one fallen door and looking about inside. There was a path, lined with glowing blue stones. It was overgrown, but he didn't have a better idea, and Sakura was already walking down it. 

He followed doggedly along. The smell of plant life was cloying in these close quarters, and between some foreign and pungent floral element, the vague earthiness of wet soil, and the slimy stink of rotting roots? Not especially pleasant. The huge vines that hung from the cracks in the glass looked pale from lack of sunlight, and there were piles of fallen leaves gathered like so much sediment around the outer ring of the biodome, high as Kurogane was tall. 

Everything in the biodome had the uncurated look of abandonment. Whatever its original intended purpose, there was little order to the space now, and each of the trees seemed to have a completely different origin than the rest. Blue bark, shining copper, some with spongy, fungal branches, others a single solid trunk and no leaves or branches at all: Kurogane could only recognize half of what he did see as plant life in the first place, and again only half of those seemed to be right. The vines were the only uniform thing about it all, and they were everywhere, making footing treacherous. 

The path was circuitous and seemed to take them past every single specimen inside the dome, though Kurogane got the feeling they were spiraling in toward the center, slowly but surely. It was hard to see through the foliage at eye level, but he could spy a single, massive tree at the center of the dome, its branches sprawling over the top of the rest, blocking out most of the artificial sunlight that shone down through the dome's ceiling. If they got there and Sakura's mystery woman wasn't waiting for them, he supposed at least they'd have time to think about what to do next. 

It was all so surreal, in a way, that Kurogane felt a little like it wouldn't have held up if he tried to reach out and touch any of it. Even assuming there was a suitable explanation for why this place seemed so empty, he couldn't imagine how it was still running; how there was air for him and Sakura to breathe; how there was light and water enough for the plants here to have survived like this. If Kariq station had been left untended, the machinery in it would have broken down within a month, at most. But this place had a feeling as though it had been sealed away for millennia, and yet here they were, no sealed helmets or oxygen tanks required. He supposed it didn't especially matter, but he couldn't help but wonder where the original inhabitants of this place had gone, and why. 

Kurogane added those questions to his mental list of things he needed to figure out, somewhere underneath ‘how do I get back home'. 

It took nearly an hour to reach the center of the biodome at Sakura's unhurried pace, and by the time they did, the smell of rotting vegetation was almost overpoweringly thick. Kurogane had tried to ignore it at first, but by now his mouth tasted like mold and his eyes were starting to water. He only hoped Sakura's mystery woman would be able to spirit them away from here quickly: otherwise, he was not looking forward to the trip back out of here. 

"I think this might be it."

They had reached the end of the path, which widened out to a mosaic of an unfamiliar creature, drawn in black and red, ringed by the glowing blue stones that had led them here. The round pavilion faced the massive central tree, and from here, there was very little light seeping in past those hungry branches above. The smell had picked up new qualities that reminded Kurogane of spoiled milk and blood, and Kurogane gagged at the sickly sweetness of it, covering his mouth in a desperate attempt to keep from dry heaving. 

Sakura didn't seem to notice; a faint sparkling of light was gathering about their form, as they looked up at the massive tree, and then down to the mosaic beneath their feet. They moved out into the center of the pavilion, while Kurogane hung back. The light seemed to sharpen, drawn to Sakura's antennae, and then dispersed, leaving an after-image of a winged figure both like and unlike Sakura, burned into Kurogane's eyes for a moment or two. 

"What was that?"

"There's someone else here," Sakura said, ignoring his question. "Close by, I think. Can you hear them?"

He hadn't, but he remembered the smell of blood, and cast about for where it was strongest. To his left, and on the outer edge of the pavilion, he was sure there was _something_. Kurogane lifted his chin, showing Sakura where to look as silently and subtly as he could. Before either of them could act, however, their company stepped out from behind the massive tree. 

"Sorry; I didn't know whether I ought to hide or flee. But you two don't seem to be with the empire." 

The source of the voice was a tall thin being that looked, functionally, like a lycan without ears. (No, wait. Were those weird round things under the creature's hair...ears? Furless ears?) In any case, this new creature wore a torn uniform and sported a broken arm, which they were cradling to their chest with a wincing but pleasant smile. Their voice was gentle, lighter in tone than Kurogane would have expected from a creature so tall, and seemed to be speaking some other language than the one Sakura spoke. Kurogane supposed he should have been fascinated by the minor cognitive dissonance that this created for him, but he was hung up on the fact that he somehow understood these languages, truth be told. 

"You're injured!" Sakura cried out worriedly, moving closer to the stranger and asking to see the injured arm. 

"You been here long?" Kurogane asked, not moving an inch.

"Ah. I couldn't really say? Been wavering in and out of consciousness since I docked." 

The thin being was pale, almost as pale as the white patches of Sakura's scales, and had yellow hair: but their eyes were the same sort of blue as the station's walls, and Kurogane didn't trust them, or that evasive answer, or the smile they gave Sakura when it became apparent that their arm would require medical attention from someone with training and equipment Sakura and Kurogane both were sadly lacking. 

"What's your name? I'm Sakura."

"I'm Fai." 

"I'm not buying it."

Sakura looked at Kurogane in puzzlement, while Fai only smiled wider. Whatever answer might have come, however, was stalled by the sound of something beginning to move. It clanked and clattered, and the three of them turned in time to see the pavilion dropping away, transforming into a staircase that led down into a dim corridor beneath the biodome. 

"Well, now. I suppose we're invited to explore, are we not?" Fai said, looking first at Sakura, then Kurogane, as if to urge them to forget about Fai and focus on the important business of a mysterious passageway to depths unknown. 

"Not with you, we aren't. What's this ‘empire' you're talking about? That whose uniform you're wearing?"

As Fai took a step toward the staircase, Kurogane slid into place to block them, subconsciously positioning his body in the way and motioning for Sakura to go around him. Sakura had paused, however, looking at Fai's uniform more closely, and echoed Kurogane's question. 

"You aren't- you're not with the imperial army, are you, Fai?"

"Not as such, no," Fai laughed, looking up at the massive tree behind them as if they could see outside of the station from here. "But I've certainly heard of them. I also heard that they pursue a certain princess, whom they hope to use in the great Emperor Reed's time machine."

At that, Sakura smiled sadly, and nodded once. 

"I had hoped this place was too remote for anyone to follow me."

"My apologies, princess. You're a popular face in most solar systems, at the moment. Emperor Reed's reach is as dreadful as the void, you know?"

Kurogane was following along as best he could, but it was a lot to keep track of all at once. It seemed Sakura was a princess, and on the run, which explained (he supposed) why she had been willing to apparently pilot her ship here on a whim. As for Fai, while they weren't exactly an officer of this Emperor's forces, they still had information. Their injury could've been caused by combat, or by damage to their ship prior to docking with the station. Kurogane wanted more information about that, really, but he was willing to wait, to watch and listen. 

In any case, Sakura seemed to have the conversation in hand, and none of the three of them was going down into that whatever-it-was until they hashed all this out, anyway.

"I see. And if you don't work for my father, then where does your allegiance lie?"

"With no one, if you don't find that too offensive, your highness."

Sakura laughed a little, and shook her head. "Not at all."

"What about you, stranger?" Fai made no secret of their interest in Kurogane, and their gaze lingered on his ears. "Are you one of the princess's admirers? Maybe a bodyguard? You certainly act protective enough."

"No. I'm- I don't know, really."

With the focus of conversation on him, Kurogane lost his appetite for talking. It had been sort of refreshing to pretend he had his equilibrium, and only think about the details relating to these other creatures, for a moment. If he had to explain who and what he was, that meant admitting the reality of his confusing situation, and trying to deal with it. He wasn't really ready for that. 

"Let's just go. We can trade introductions after you find your weird vision lady." 

He could see Fai's curiosity piqued by the mention of Sakura's vision, but didn't linger. Sakura had taken him at face value and turned around as well, and shortly the three of them reached the bottom of the spiraling mosaic staircase. It let out in a large dark room, lit only by more of those glowing blue stones that had marked the path in the biodome. At the center of the room was a white ship with a ruby-colored cockpit. It looked long abandoned, covered in dust and inactive, to all appearances. 

Sakura approached it anyway. 

"Hey, are you sure you should-" Kurogane said. 

At the same time, Fai was saying, 

"Princess, is it wise to-"

She didn't stop for either of them. Instead, she laid a hand on the ship's landing gear, and said _hello!_ as if it would respond. 

And to both Kurogane and Fai's immense surprise, it did: the ship whirred to life, jewel-bright veins of energy shining along its hull. From its belly, a ramp descended, landing just beside where Sakura stood. The ramp had a gentle enough grade to make walking up it less than a chore, and it seemed to lead up into a hatch that had been hidden from view before. 

Then a figure appeared, right in the middle of the three of them. Sakura exclaimed in delighted surprise, and Fai kept countenance: but to Kurogane, it was an image of that same winged creature whose form had been etched in the mosaic up above, and it spoke in a deep, resonant voice that felt like it was rumbling in his temples and shaking his bones. 

_You've finally arrived._

"Madam- miss! I heard you calling to me. It felt so familiar, your voice. I-I have a lot of questions for you."

Sakura sounded desperate, and looked frantic, as if now that she had completed this step of her mission, she wasn't sure what to do next. Her antennae were quavering with excitement, and Kurogane reached out without thinking, patting her shoulder to try to help with her nerves. Given that she was, apparently, a princess, maybe he ought to have done something else. She didn't seem to mind. Taking comfort from the gesture, she steadied herself, and tried to maintain her poise.

"But as much as I'd like to ask all of them, I'd settle for just one." 

_Answers,_ said the creature (or, perhaps to Sakura, the woman) _I may not have answers. You may ask your questions anyway._

Sakura faltered, disappointment writ plain across her face, and looked to Kurogane, then Fai, for assistance. Kurogane didn't know what to say. He was grateful when Fai spoke up instead.

"What is this place?"

_It is neither a place, nor a time. We exist outside of existence itself. This makes the impossible possible._

"Is that how I ended up here?" Kurogane blurted out, even though he didn't really want to risk owing this mysterious being anything. "Is there a way to go back where we came from?"

_To leave the station is to return to existence. I cannot say where or when you will be. If you leave together, though, then you will be together. And that is something._

The creature flapped its wings lazily through the air, untroubled by the uncertainty it had sown. Fai looked tense, but said nothing. Kurogane felt much the same, and squeezed Sakura's shoulder in an effort to reassure her. (And himself, if he was honest about it.) It was Sakura's determination that eventually broke the silence once more, her voice trembling.

"My father, the emperor, was possessed by the specter of his father when he came of age. How can I banish that specter? How can I save my father from his fate?"

The creature laughed, and Kurogane wondered if it had any conception of parents and things. It looked like a gigantic insect, to him. Did insects have family structures? Were insects sentient in space? (Did they have genders? Was that why Sakura was calling it a woman- no, he had to be overthinking this.)

_A kind question. A kind heart. But an emperor cannot be absolved from his actions because of the face he puts on when he makes them._

Sakura looked confused, and turned to Kurogane, then Fai, as if they might better understand the answer. Fai looked away, their blue eyes narrowed in thought, and Kurogane shrugged. He couldn't make sense of Sakura's question in the first place, let alone the answer. With no one but herself to turn to for the key to her answer, Sakura shifted her weight from right foot to left and back again, trying to think it over on her own. It was terribly still and kind of cold in this place, though on the upside, the overpowering vegetable stink of the biodome was fainter, here. Kurogane crossed his arms over his chest, trying not to shiver. 

Eventually, Sakura gave up, saying:

"I don't understand; what do you mean, the face he puts on?"

_The man who pursues you with the intent to steal the vessel of your body is your father. The specter and he are one and the same. His fate is his own doing, little one. You cannot change that._

Visibly shaken, Sakura clutched her hands together. 

"But-! Then how can I stop him?"

She began shrinking in on herself in horror, blinking hard to keep her eyes clear of tears. 

"I can't even find mother! My brother was captured, and I only escaped because of your message! What will I do?!"

The space station shook as if it had come under fire, and a blaring alarm began ringing through the whole place. It felt like a personal assault on Kurogane's ears, and he flattened them along his skull in a failed attempt to block it out. Sakura was still talking to the creature, but Kurogane caught Fai looking about as warily as he was, and they shared a brief nod of understanding. Whatever was happening, the three of them needed to look out for each other, for now. Doubt and suspicion could wait till they were relatively safe.

Either unhurried or unaware of the world beyond this hidden room, the creature answered Sakura with a note of compassion in its ‘voice'. 

_Please, take Mokona._

Sakura nodded, reaching out to touch the creature with a tearful expression of longing and sorrow and hope that made Kurogane feel like he was missing out on some details, somewhere. She said something that didn't quite reach him, something that must've been close to _I will!_ or _I promise!_ Fai had settled on watching the stairs the three of them had come down, while Kurogane kept an eye on the vast, dark room all around them. Therefore, he was the one who spotted the soldiers first, streaming in through a shadowed doorway that almost completely blended in with the rest of the place. They wore full reflective armor, which flashed and flickered as they moved. He almost didn't notice them in time. 

"Get on the ship!" Kurogane shouted, grabbing Fai by the uninjured arm and dragging them toward the ramp just a moment before a gleaming, bright blast struck where Fai had just been standing. Bullets, from the look and smell of them, but made of magnesium and copper. That was lucky for Kurogane, but he had no way of knowing if his companions were vulnerable to these sorts of things. Even if they weren't, guns were guns, and Kurogane didn't like his odds in his current shape. They might not be able to kill him, but they could certainly wound him enough to make life complicated. He tried to gauge if he had time to transform, but Sakura didn't look like someone with combat ability, and Fai was already injured. Right now, he couldn't afford to stand his ground. They all needed to get out of here. 

"Where did they come from?" Fai gasped, looking about wildly for the source of the shot.

"That's for later! For now: move it!"

Sakura yelped, running ahead of them, and suddenly the room was lit up by thirty more shots, all firing at once. A good portion of the enemy's fire glanced off the sides of the ship- Mokona- and refracted back across the room, strangely augmented. The arc of their blasts illuminated the enemy soldiers in full for a moment: easily fifty were already in the room, and still more were filing in. A second volley followed, this time more clearly aiming for anything other than Sakura herself. Several bullets struck the ramp near Fai's feet, and one caught Kurogane's side. He did his best to ignore it. After all, the bullet wasn't silver, so it wasn't going to kill him in the next few seconds. It still _hurt_ plenty, though.

In the commotion, Kurogane could barely hear the winged creature's ephemeral voice echoing in his skull. If it was still down there, he could only imagine it'd been shot too, by now. But when he looked for it over his shoulder, he saw no sign of where it might have gone.

_Don't worry, little one. Everything is going to be all right._

"Close the hatch," Kurogane commanded, letting go as soon as he'd dragged Fai on board beside him. Sakura pressed her hand against a glowing pink panel, and the ramp retracted into the hull, reforming it so perfectly that there wasn't even a seam left behind. 

"That was close," said Fai, leaning back against a wall and then looking at Kurogane strangely. "You're bleeding, you know."

Kurogane grunted, looking to Sakura in the hope of diverting attention from his own troubles. It wasn't a fatal wound, he was sure of that. He didn't see why it should be a high priority when they still weren't safe yet. He put a hand over the wound as if to hide it, just in case anyone tried to press the issue. (But that hurt, too.)

"Were those the emperor's troops? Do you know how to fly a ship like this?"

"Yes, maybe, and are you going to be okay?" Sakura fretted, stepping closer to look at Kurogane's wound. 

"This guy's way worse off than I am," Kurogane pointed out, somewhat petulantly. Neither Fai nor Sakura seemed to be swayed. Annoying. "Anyway, I doubt either of us can pilot this thing. I've never seen technology like this, anyway. You?"

Fai smiled wryly, and shrugged their good arm. 

"No, I'm afraid you're right."

"Right. Maybe is better than 'definitely not.' So, let the two of us patch each other up. You get us out of here. And then, uh. I don't know, once we're clear we can figure out..." Kurogane made a vague gesture with the hand he wasn't using to cover his wound, trying to encompass Sakura's issues, his own, and whatever Fai's deal was, too. "Everything."

"I...okay. That's a good first step." 

Sakura took a deep, steadying breath, and headed to the front of the ship, taking a seat in the cockpit. The controls did respond to her when she touched the various panels and began to test the buttons she could reach from her seated position, but whatever training she'd had with her own ships didn't seem to carry over completely, here. It really didn't share any design qualities to his own technology beyond the presence of a cockpit and pilot chair, and that was disconcerting in an increasingly familiar fashion. At this point, Kurogane had half expected there to be no chair at all, nor any sign of a means to steer with. It wouldn't have been any weirder than the rest of the shit he'd seen so far today. 

He was worried, after their meeting with that weird creature, that he might be a little more in over his head than he'd thought. Sakura seemed to have a complicated set of problems, and he felt like he'd accidentally gotten caught up in them. She wasn't going to have time to sort out Kurogane's issues, anyway, until she'd successfully evaded her father's forces, he suspected. Even then, Kurogane wasn't quite certain what the existence of an intergalactic empire even meant for his home. Yes, he wanted to get back to Kariq station, to Tomoyo and Souma and his work and his fairly ordinary life. But if that meant leading Sakura and her empire to the door, was it really a good idea?

Kurogane was a little mesmerized, watching Sakura working with the controls. She seemed to be figuring them out by trial and error, but that meant he could connect what he saw, and learn by proxy. The buttons along the right side of the seat, just within arm's reach, each made adjustments to course heading, from what he could tell. The display was spinning with each button press, but they weren't going anywhere yet. Above, six different dials displayed information in a language he couldn't read, and to the left were more buttons that seemed to adjust the wings (this thing had wings? In space?), landing gear, and shielding on the ship. There were levers in front of her, but she still hadn't found the ignition, wherever it was. 

"That looks painful," Fai commented lightly. 

Somehow, Fai had closed the distance between the two of them. Now they stood close enough to pry Kurogane's hand from his side, and look over the burned spot in Kurogane's spacesuit. Flinching, Kurogane followed Fai's look with a detached sort of curiosity, and stared down at his own wounded side. He silently lamented the ruined spacesuit and the torn, singed flesh beneath. It hurt pretty badly, actually. (How long had it been since they ran up the ramp into the cabin, here? He was sweating, too.) 

Belatedly, it occurred to Kurogane that, maybe, even though the bullets hadn't been silver, he should take the fact that he'd been shot slightly more seriously.

"Yeah, well. Let's take care of it. Splint your arm, too."

"I accept your invitation. Shall we scour the ship for medical supplies?"

Kurogane muttered, a little put off. Part of him had wanted, after the last few hours, to just finally sit down. Quashing the urge to whine, he made himself nod. 

"Sure."

They began the search, Fai keeping their peace and Kurogane preoccupied with the panicked sensation of running out of time. If the distant, rocks-on-metal sound of bullets striking the hull was any indication, the empire's soldiers were still trying to get in, and he had no reason to suspect they wouldn't eventually succeed. The ship still wasn't moving by the time Fai located a bench whose seat held a cache of medicine, bandages and a sprayable cream of some kind.

"So," Fai said, motioning for Kurogane to sit on the bench, once they'd replaced the seat. "I'm going to clean that wound and bandage it for you. Then, perhaps, could I trouble you to set my arm?"

"Deal." 

Fai smiled, and Kurogane thought with a fuzzy sort of clarity that this time, it was a little bit softer than the ones Fai had flashed while they were still in the biodome. He didn't mention it, instead unzipping and shrugging out of his jacket with as much care as he could, trying not to pull on the wound. He didn't bother taking off his shirt; it would've required too much stretching to be comfortable, and he figured Fai was perfectly capable of pulling the fabric up out of the way for bandaging purposes. 

The sprayable cream, apparently, was Fai's solution for cleaning and numbing the wound. It was a greenish blue color, and it smelled faintly of the ocean. As soon as it touched the wound he felt cold there, as if someone had jammed an icepack into his side instead of shooting him. The lack of pain was such a relief that he was overtaken by a sudden and complete exhaustion. 

"Fuck," Kurogane said weakly, and Fai laughed, though not without kindness. 

"Better?" When Kurogane realized that Fai had gotten all close again and was staring searchingly into his eyes, he did his best to sit back up, shaking his head to banish the drowsiness. Fai had a knowing look on their face, as if they'd often been in Kurogane's shoes. He wondered if he was projecting that, or if his suspicion was true. "Maybe too better, huh?"

"I'll be fine."

Fai raised their eyebrows as if to say, _will you?_ and Kurogane huffed in frustration. It wasn't like he was lying. It just might take time before it was true.

"Just bandage me up so I can fix you."

At that, Fai rolled their eyes, looking amused. They made no further comment, though, simply putting Kurogane's suggestions into effect. It didn't look like it was all that comfortable to wrap the bandage one-handed, but Kurogane helped, holding it in place while Fai cut the strip and then sealed the two edges together with an adhesive device Kurogane hadn't seen them pull out. Setting Fai's arm, it turned out, was actually the easy part; they had no splint on hand to keep it in place once they'd done so, and Kurogane ended up repurposing a pair of support beams from inside the bench to stabilize the bones. He did the whole business in silence, concentrating, and when he looked up was surprised to find Fai looking green around the gills. 

"Did that hurt? You should've said something, I could've tried to do a better job."

"We don't exactly have a lot of options," Fai said in a shadow of their earlier cheer. "It's fine." 

Turnabout was fair play, but Kurogane let the subject change. Truth be told, he was too tired to call out Fai's bullshit.

"If you say so."

"So, now that we're as healthy as we can be, at the moment, shall we trade introductions?"

Kurogane hesitated, glancing over at Sakura. At some point, apparently, she'd summoned a display of the ship's internal layout, and was now studying it intensely, all while talking to herself and pacing around the cockpit chair. He didn't see how he could've helped her, though, and he was still sore, still tired. 

And, he thought with just a little bit of guilt, Fai certainly didn't seem to be any worse an unknown creature than Sakura. What harm could a name do?

"Yeah. Kurogane." He offered his left hand to shake, since Fai's right arm was broken. Fai looked mystified by the gesture, but let Kurogane grab their hand. 

"Kurogane? I'm afraid I've never heard that expression before. What does it mean?"

"It's my name," Kurogane grumbled. 

"Oh! What an unusual name. Kurogane," Fai repeated, making a mess of the whole thing, though less of a mess than Sakura had. "It's nice to meet you, Kurogane."

"Yeah," Kurogane said, though he wasn't sure he agreed. He supposed Fai wasn't awful, at least. "I guess this is an insensitive question, but what are you?"

Fai's smile looked less soft, again. They said, humbly, 

"Just Fai."


	5. But I feel like I can trust you

The ship launched, after Sakura had been studying it for several hours and Kurogane had fallen asleep. Or so he assumed it must have done, because when he woke up again, he and Fai were sitting on benches opposite each other, and the tink-tink-tink of the bullets hitting the hull was gone, replaced by a silence that felt familiar and reassuring, even if he was in the wrong ship. 

Sakura was sitting in the cockpit, talking to what looked like a tiny, glowing rabbit, and Kurogane wasn't entirely convinced he was awake, after all. 

"We got moving?" he asked blurrily, and the rabbit jumped into Sakura's arms. Sakura brightened, her antennae rising up and glittering faintly as he stood up and moved to join her. They could see a faint, red-toned view of the stars passing by outside the ship. It was a little overwhelming, all told. He'd never been in a vessel that could go this fast. 

"Kurogane! I'm glad you're awake. Meet Mokona!"

He looked down at the glowing rabbit in her arms, and tried to parse what she was telling him. All the madness of his situation was starting to catch up to him, though. He wasn't sure he could really handle much more without just shutting down. Sleeping had helped, but he was hungry and still felt weak from his wound, besides. 

"Pleased to meetcha!" said the rabbit-thing. Well, Mokona. Presumably.

"Right." 

Sakura hugged Mokona to her chest, and shushed it quietly, motioning to where Fai still sat sleeping. Mokona saluted her, and flapped its ears cheerfully, saying nothing more. 

"I was able to get us moving, but I didn't really know where else to go. Fai suggested we visit a spaceport that's not too far, so that's our current destination. But, um, if you had any other place you thought might help, I'm all ears!"

He had the sneaking suspicion that she was joking about his appearance, but didn't voice it. Kurogane have never seen creatures like her or Fai or Mokona before, he supposed they might find him equally unusual. Anyway, if the worst she was going to do was make puns about his ears, there were a lot of other, more important things for him to get annoyed about, frankly. 

"There are spaceports," Kurogane said tiredly, leaning against the control panels to the right of the pilot's chair. "Of course there are. Why would anything surprise me anymore?"

"Um, Kurogane-! Please don't touch anything!"

He stood up straighter, and tried to gauge where he could rest. There really wasn't much in the way of comfort on the ship, though. Everything seemed to be built for speed. 

"Sorry."

"I'm sorry for not telling you! I just, uh, I really don't want us to veer off course. There's a whole wing of fighters chasing us, and we're only barely faster than they are."

That changed things, though, didn't it? Kurogane glanced behind himself, though he knew full well he wouldn't be able to see any sign of their pursuit through the ship's walls. Although Sakura was admirably calm for someone being hunted down by their father, he wasn't entirely certain they were going to be able to pull off her plan. It seemed likely they'd need to put some serious distance between themselves and those fighters, at least, to get started. And of course, she didn't really have a plan, did she? That was half the problem.

"We're faster than they are?" He repeated thoughtfully. A seed of some kind of idea was forming in the back of his mind. "How much faster?"

"Mokona can answer!" Mokona chimed in, keeping its voice hushed, now. "The fighter ships in Emperor Reed's fleet are traveling at seven hundred umics per second! Mokona is traveling at seven hundred seventy seven umics per second~"

Kurogane wasn't familiar with that unit of measurement, and didn't know if knowing would help, but he asked anyway. 

"Umic? What's that mean?"

"You know, a umic!" said Mokona, unhelpfully. 

"I'm pretty sure it stands for universal measurement of interstellar crossing," Sakura said, somewhat helpfully. 

Between the puzzle of how he understood what anyone was saying, how he'd gotten here, where here was, why he was here, and what an intergalactic empire could possibly want with a single person, even if she was the Emperor's daughter, he supposed getting a more specific description of a _umic_ wasn't that important. But, just a little bit, the pilot in him growled in frustration. Kurogane couldn't visualize anything meaningful to do with their current travel. He had no idea how fast they were going, or how far they could get. 

"Right, whatever. Can you go faster? What would you need to make that happen?"

"Hmm." Sakura brought up the display she had been studying when he'd passed out, looking it over again. "We could jettison the escape pod. It's equipped with a miniature version of Mokona's entire system, including its own engines. If we needed to bring it back, we could even activate its homing beacon and have it follow us. It would just take a few days to catch up once we stopped."

"Then Mokona could travel at eight hundred umics! That would be plenty to make it to the spaceport with time to spare, and luckier, too!" 

Kurogane didn't really know what they were expecting to find at the spaceport. Fai's suggestion hadn't sounded like it came with a good follow-up step, and they couldn't linger for long with a literal empire on their trail. At the same time, he couldn't argue that going faster would be useful. 

"Should we jettison the thing right now? Or wait?"

"I don't know. For the moment it looks like we'd have a window of about two days at the spaceport before they catch up to us. If we jettison the escape pod, we'd have almost three, but I don't know that that would really give us a lot of options."

"Well, what are we doing at the spaceport? Who are we looking for? How are we gonna beat your dad?"

Sakura's jaw dropped, as if Kurogane had just suggested something impossible. He didn't feel like she really had any right to act all shocked, in truth, but he waited. Maybe she'd have some ideas, now that he'd gone and asked his stupid questions. 

"We can't _beat my dad,_ Kurogane! He's the emperor for a reason- he's in control of eight galactic merchant alliances and twenty six solar systems!"

"So, what? You wanna stop running? Give him your...vessel or whatever?"

"No!"

Kurogane frowned, and yawned, and rubbed at his eyes. 

"Well, setting that detail aside, we need food, and we need friends. Lots of ‘em, from the sound of it, ‘cause your dad probably has more resources than I could dream of. Wouldn't hurt to get a doctor if we could find one, because I don't know if I did a good job setting Fai's arm and broken bones still take a week to heal, so that's gonna be rough on them."

Now Sakura's wide green eyes went even wider, which he wouldn't have thought possible. Mokona was staring with wide eyes, too. They appeared to be feline, and kind of unnerved him.

"What is it this time?"

"Do- do you heal broken bones that quickly? In a week?" Sakura said, sounding deeply surprised at the very idea. 

"Uh, yeah. Doesn't everybody?" 

"No! I mean. I mean? I don't know exactly what Fai's species is, I suppose," Sakura admitted, looking troubled. "But for a teraph, broken bones take nearly a year to heal, and it's extremely difficult to set them properly!"

The thought of having to wait _that long_ for an injury to heal made Kurogane wince, but he let it slide, trying to keep the conversation focused. 

"Okay. Guess that's a lycan thing, but all the more reason to scrounge up a doctor. We need food, medicine, someone who can use it, and friends. You mentioned a brother-in-law back there, too. Any chance he could help us? Do we know where he is?"

Fai stirred, where they'd been dozing on the bench in the corner, and Sakura glanced their way, then looked to Kurogane, her expression thoughtful. 

"Yukito and I were going to meet on his ship, in the Cat's Eye nebula. It should be difficult for my father to find us there, but I was being chased the whole way, so I didn't dare go near it and give the plan away."

"So if you can throw off the wing following you," Kurogane said slowly, trying to visualize how they'd do that and coming up empty. "Somehow, I guess, then you could meet with him, and maybe he'd have a better idea of where to go from there, huh?"

Sakura nodded. She called out to Fai,

"Would you like to join us? We could probably use your help."

"Hmm. Well, I don't dislike your plan," Fai said, standing up from the bench and stretching, though they were careful not to jar their splinted arm. "But the only way I see to distract them would be to create a fake trail for them to follow. Maybe leave traces of your psychic signature somewhere remote? It wouldn't be easy."

"Her what now?" 

"It's something all teraphs have. We can communicate through thoughts and emotions, and leave traces of ourselves imbued in objects, you see? The Witch of Space was a teraph, too. I'm sure she must have been, to be able to make a ship like Mokona."

Mokona preened, dancing about between the three of them as if Sakura had been praising Mokona and not the strange creature they'd found on the space station. As it was Fai's first time seeing the little rabbit, however, they seemed enchanted by the dance, and picked Mokona up with a delighted laugh. 

"I see! Mokona, is it? What a charming idea."

"Mokona is _very_ charming," Mokona agreed. 

"More to the point, if I understand you right," Kurogane interrupted, trying again to keep them all on track. "Sakura, you can imbue something with your psychic energy, and then we could be ejected from the ship on the escape pod to drop on some planet you're _not_ going to. We leave the thing with your energy on the planet, and Mokona can retrieve the escape pod. Am I remembering all that right?"

Fai whistled obnoxiously, and Kurogane shot them a glower that he felt was rather restrained, considering the day (or however long it had been so far) he was having. In the pilot chair, Sakura was rapidly plugging in calculations for the voyage, consulting a three dimensional starmap, and scrolling endlessly through options, trying to find her destination of choice. She had her tongue stuck out in concentration, her brow scrunched up, and Kurogane wondered what would happen if they failed- if her father's specter was able to possess her body, or use it for a time machine, or whatever. 

"I think that might work!" Sakura said after a moment, brightening. "This is Magarha; it's an abandoned system."

"Sorry, what? Abandoned system? As in, solar system?"

"Yeah! There was an ancient civilization throughout its planets. They predated the empire, and when their solar star became a red dwarf, the people either fled or passed away. The ruins there are quite popular as a travel destination, and it's not far from the nebula!"

The fact that the ruins were popular laid to rest some of Kurogane's worry at the words _red dwarf_, but replaced his fear of a freezingly cold world with the reasonable suspicion that they might run into trouble on the unfamiliar planet. He frowned, and spoke up. 

"You're sure Fai and I aren't going to stand out too much there?"

At that, Sakura laughed, and shook her head. 

"Not at all! People from all over this galaxy visit Magarha. Even if you stand out, that should help you blend in. I'll pass by the system on my way to visit Yukito, and once we've dropped you off, Mokona can shield me until I reach my rendezvous." 

"Would you need us to land somewhere, or just float about?" Fai wondered, looking over Sakura's shoulder at the starmap. 

"If you can land on the fourth planet, it's got a similar atmosphere to the one we're using right now, and you wouldn't need to be out in it for more than a minute or two to drop off my decoy."

This all sounded...highly questionable. Dangerous, even, Kurogane thought to himself. But he kept the thought private, because he didn't have a better suggestion, and technically, this was his own idea, after a fashion. He certainly didn't know a thing about the planets in this part of the universe, so it wasn't as though there were others he would've preferred to visit. A part of Kurogane wondered, though, if Sakura's starmap would've had an entry for Rulu, and his solar star. If they could find it, would it be impossibly far, or distressingly close? He was afraid to find out.

"Then it's settled. We can pick up supplies at the spaceport, then head out as fast as possible for Magarha," Fai decided, and Sakura nodded in agreement. 

Kurogane held his tongue, and hoped that nothing would go wrong.


	6. Though I regret how much, sometimes

Naturally, everything went wrong. 

First of all, the spaceport was crowded, had a contingent of imperial ships docked in it already, and they weren't able to get any supplies before they had to rush back aboard and flee at Mokona's top speed, pursued by a freshly fueled fleet of imperial fighters. Then, they had to enter a communication deadspot where Mokona's lighting suddenly cut out as well, leaving them in the dark for six hungry days, with only enough food for a single meal every thirty hours. 

Kurogane was dreading the next time he had to transform, and too hungry to concentrate on much, when they finally exited the deadspot and found themselves mysteriously free of imperial pursuit for the moment. He'd noticed three important things while they were in the dark:

One, Fai did not eat. 

Two, Sakura could not read their minds (as he'd initially feared, when told she was psychic), but she felt their emotions, and there was no point in lying to her if he was feeling like death warmed over. 

Three, Mokona _did_ eat. Or, in other words: Mokona needed fuel. 

So, as they discussed how to proceed, Kurogane started things by leaning in a corner he had determined was dial- and button-free, and therefore safe to rest in when he wasn't trying to sleep. 

"We need to refuel," he said, matter-of-factly, though he wasn't sure if those words would make sense to his companions. He'd noticed a few times, now, that whatever it was that translated their speech didn't always work right, both coming and going. If Sakura and Fai had no concept of fuel as Kurogane meant it, he was fairly certain they'd be unsure of what he'd said. 

Luckily, this wasn't one of those times, because Fai nodded and Sakura pulled up an internal display to show Kurogane where to look for the fuel supply. 

"Mokona is kind of alive. She's not like us, but she doesn't need fuel the same way a normal ship might." 

"Huh," said Kurogane. 

"That makes sense," said Fai, who was looking at the glowing rabbit-avatar of the ship, watching her dance about the cockpit while they talked. "So, what will she need?"

"Love~!" Mokona cried, and twirled in place, laughing to herself. "Lots and lots of love, right away!!"

Though she shook her head at that, Sakura smiled a little, and pointed out the small section of the ship she'd been highlighting on her display. 

"Mokona is literally powered by memories. The Witch of Space poured all of her memories into Mokona's creation, along with a partner of hers whose name is not present in any of the logs. So, if those memories are truly memories, they can't be consumed, exactly. To restore them, I or one of you two would need to connect with the ship's interface, here."

"And?" Kurogane asked, trying to gauge how to get there from the diagram. Fai remained completely silent beside him. 

"And just...feel. The ship is powered on feelings. It converts them to psychic energy, and stores that energy in crystals lining the ship's circuitry."

Kurogane wasn't sure if he could do that, but he didn't see the harm in trying. At worst, he would discover that he wasn't capable of feeling things on command, he supposed. 

"How much fuel do we need? I'll give it a shot."

"Not a lot more than we have," Sakura said, sounding relieved. "If you could just interface with the ship for an hour or so, that should cover us." 

While he noticed very keenly Fai's continued silence, Kurogane ignored it. He told Sakura that that was fine, and had Mokona's avatar guide him down to the chamber in question. It was a peculiarity of Mokona's design that there seemed to be quite a few more rooms inside the ship than Kurogane had thought at first glance. It made good use of its compact, limited space, and the fueling station was no different: rather than a room, it was more like a small hole, barely big enough for a person to move around in. There was a relatively comfortable chair at the bottom of a ladder, and nothing else to look at in the room aside from the chair. 

Kurogane sat in it, and pressed the right armrest, as Sakura had instructed him. 

Everything went white. 

He came to with Fai's hazy face in front of him, and realized he hadn't exactly passed out, so much as ceased to be capable of processing anything happening around him. Fai was saying something, but the sound of Fai's voice felt far away and warped, as though Kurogane was being held underwater. The edges of Kurogane's vision were wavering, threatening to go white again, empty, until Fai slapped him across the face, jarring him free of the chair and the fugue he'd fallen into. 

Kurogane had no idea how Fai had managed to climb down the ladder one handed, but they had. They barely fit in the cramped, horrible fueling station, but they were standing there and Kurogane was grateful for it. He pushed himself up, out of the chair, into Fai's chest; he didn't apologize for it, couldn't move his mouth, couldn't hear if Fai was bothered by it, anyway.

It took a good minute or twelve before Kurogane was able to stand to his full height. 

"You okay?" Fai said quietly, in a tone that said they knew full well that Kurogane was not okay. 

"Thanks," Kurogane said back, because he didn't want to talk about it. 

They returned to the main part of the ship, and Sakura looked at Kurogane with guilty, apologetic eyes. He didn't try to tell her it was fine, because he wasn't even certain what had happened to him. He didn't feel angry, anyway. 

Actually, he didn't feel anything at all for the rest of the day, and that was the worst part. 

The next day they were close enough to Magarha that Kurogane didn't want to waste time on telling Sakura and Fai both how full of shit they were for not warning him, because he could tell they'd both known what was coming and let him walk into it like a fool, anyway. Maybe they'd thought it would be easier on him, having the life sucked out through his eyeballs all unawares. Maybe they'd been scared shitless he'd make one of them do it. 

He didn't want to know what they were going to do when it came time to refuel the ship again. The only thing any of them said about _that_ was Sakura promising:

"You really helped us out, Kurogane. We should be able to stay ahead of my father for a long time."

The escape pod was considerably bigger than the fueling station, and a lot more comfortable. Kurogane took the one seat, and Fai took the other, and they both waited until Sakura's voice hummed over the ship's internal communication system: 

_Good luck down there. I spent yesterday and this morning charging my mother's ring. You have it, mister Fai._

Kurogane made a mental note, and answered roughly, 

"Hey, princess. Be safe."

For a moment, she didn't answer. Then she spoke again, her voice warm with relief:

_You too, Kurogane. Both of you, actually. Come back safe, okay?_


	7. I want to know you

Magarha was bustling with activity. If they hadn't told him before he landed that the planet was supposed to be a ruin, Kurogane would have thought it was inhabited. There was certainly life here, just not native life, anymore: the ruined buildings were constantly visited by curious travelers, the empty fields had been converted into restaurants and performance venues. 

When they'd left the escape pod only to be immediately assailed by the not-so-distant sound of music, Kurogane and Fai had mutually agreed to go steal a sizeable amount of food from the revelers. 

"After all, we shouldn't leave the ring too close to the escape pod," Fai said with a laugh. "In case it doesn't have enough energy to get back into space."

It wasn't a particularly funny joke, and Kurogane didn't deign to give it a response. Instead, he squinted out over the horizon at the ruinous city below, and was privately grateful that they'd landed on a hill, a decent amount of distance from the nearest gathering. The sky here was more black than it was blue, the atmosphere thin and the dwarf star's light fairly feeble compared to Rulu. Kurogane was struck by the realization that he was stepping out onto his first alien planet. 

Even back home, it'd been nearly a year since he'd seen land. He hadn't realized how much he missed it. The prospect of exploring space like this had never even occurred to him before he'd been pulled away from Kariq station, and he had to admit there was something terribly exciting about seeing something that ordinarily would never have been his to see. Just as strongly, though, he felt a terrible sense of loneliness, sure that he would never again set foot on his homeworld, nor see any of the people in his life who he'd worked so hard to take care of, and become close to. His stomach, already rebelling thanks to hunger, twisted and churned, and he leaned against the outside of the escape pod, trying to collect himself. 

"What should we do first?" Fai asked lightly, as he stepped out onto the same soil and seemed to feel nothing at all: not wonder or dread, or anything. 

"Food," Kurogane decided, and they set out for the source of the music, starting there and working their way down into the depths of the ruins. 

As it turned out, the revelers and traveling historians and sight-seeing tourists all seemed completely unaware of their company. They were able to sneak a meal out of the first congregation they found, while listening to music and watching dancers laugh and twirl about in the round, empty base of what once had been a tower. Next, they raided a semi-permanent restaurant, bringing back enough supplies to feed Sakura and Kurogane for several months. Following that, they wandered as far as a river below the city ruins they'd found, where Fai cast the ring into the waters, and shook out his hand. 

"There. Now we can leave," he said simply. 

Kurogane was inclined to agree; whatever history might've rested in Magarha felt smothered beneath the visitors, and he didn't know how to find more about it or who would even have cared about such things. They made their way back up the hill much more slowly than they'd made the trip down, and when they reached the escape pod, Fai stopped to look back over it all. The red dwarf was out of sight at the moment, and night was cold, here. 

"I have a question for you," Kurogane said, while they were still both looking out over the shadow of the ruins. "It's another insensitive one, though, so feel free not to answer if you don't feel like it."

"Hm. All right." Fai turned to look at Kurogane. His eyes glowed faintly, in the full dark of night. 

"Why don't you eat? Or, if you do eat, what do you eat?"

"Blood," Fai said, which didn't make sense at first. Then, when Kurogane frowned in confusion, Fai clarified. "I do eat; or, I can. I eat blood. I don't need to do it very often."

There wasn't much Kurogane could think of to say to that, except, _oh._

"I don't enjoy it," Fai added, and Kurogane believed him. 

The night dropped colder and colder, and somehow they moved closer together, until Fai was leaning against Kurogane and Kurogane was surprised to discover he didn't mind. They could've gone inside the escape pod, he supposed, but the view here was nice. Having his feet on soil, even mysterious soil of an ancient, distant planet, was nice. The atmosphere was a little thin, but not so bad that he was breathless. 

"I have a question for you, too."

Surprised, Kurogane looked down at the shoulder leaned into his chest. Fai hadn't smelled of blood since that first day, when they'd both been freshly wounded, but he did have a faint scent about him, all the time: cinnamon-sharp, as if he powdered himself with the stuff every day. It was stronger in the sealed cabin of the escape pod, but here it mixed with the faint tang of the soil, and the distant smell of the river on the wind. Maybe if he answered Fai's question, he could justify asking about the cinnamon. Maybe he was curious what Fai would even ask him. He didn't especially like talking about himself, though, so he hesitated.

"'S'it rude?" he said, after some internal debate.

"I suppose that depends. I don't think it is, but I'm not you." 

Kurogane considered that, and decided he didn't mind any question in the asking, though he might not bother to answer, if it was offensive enough. 

"All right. You can ask, anyway."

"How wonderfully generous of you," Fai teased. "How good are those ears of yours? They seem much larger and more- what's the word. Expressive? than mine."

It was a surprising question, not so much in that it was strange that Fai would ask, but that Kurogane had been puzzled that it didn't come sooner. He had simply come to the conclusion that, if one was part of an intergalactic empire, one was more accustomed to the idea of different species and different evolutionary abilities than he was, himself. To be asked now added all sorts of interesting subtext to the question's existence, because it meant that Fai had been curious but held back, for one reason or another, until now. He couldn't help but wonder why that was.

"Not as much as you might think. My sense of smell's good out to that river. My hearing's only useful about to that old tower thing, from here."

"Huh," Fai said, sounding pleased to have learned something about Kurogane. He didn't press further, and Kurogane didn't feel like talking anyway. They stayed there, huddled rather close and watching the city bustle about, till night had ended.

When the red star began to rise again, they boarded the escape pod, and Kurogane told Mokona to bring them in. The pod lifted off of the hill and gently returned to the sky, and Fai reached down to pop open a bottle of what smelled almost exactly like rice wine. 

"I thought you eat blood?"

"I can drink whatever I want," Fai clarified, with a small smile that Kurogane thought looked very conspiratory. "And I grabbed six bottles of this, if you're interested in joining me."


	8. Even your dreams

Long after the pod had entered the slow, boring, starless distance between Magarha and the Cat's Eye nebula, when they'd both drunk a bottle and were starting to feel the weight of night's dreamy shadows, Fai spoke, apropos of nothing. 

He said, 

"When I was a child" 

and stopped. And laughed, turning up his second bottle, drinking its dregs. He made a face, wrinkling his nose. 

"Ugh, bitter."

Kurogane waited, until the silence became drowsy, and the stars he'd been watching had moved a millimeter or two, from his line of sight. Nothing more came, and he groused, kicking Fai's leg to jumpstart the conversation. Their weight shifted a bit to the larboard and the pod swung very slightly in that direction, then wobbled back into place. Even without active engines of their own, Mokona's faint call was pulling them onward through sheer inertia, dragging them in the ship's wake. He didn't understand precisely how the escape pod worked, but he couldn't argue that it was, indeed, working. 

That felt like how everything was around here.

"What?" 

"What were you saying?" 

"Oh!" Fai nodded, three times, four, and slumped over, falling against the window of the pod. "Right, right. When- when I was a child, I used to have the same dream every night. These...ruins, in the desert. I'd wake up in them, as if I'd been there for a long time. Only, there was nobody there. As far as the eye could see, no one. Just sand, and these bones of old buildings from so long ago."

In his mind's eye, Kurogane could picture it: a desolate wasteland with nothing but the stars above for company. He could only imagine how troubling the dream must have felt, especially as a child, and for a moment he wondered if Fai might be opening up. Oblivious to Kurogane's feelings, Fai drawled on, staring into the middle distance. 

"I always felt such a sense of peace there."

Kurogane struggled to find a way to answer that. It sounded miserably lonely to him, anyway, and the thought of waking up confused under an unfamiliar sky was closer to home than he liked. Maybe it was telling that the thought of being completely apart from anything was comforting to Fai. Certainly he gave the opposite impression, usually, all rambling conversation and friendly social pleasantries. 

It took Kurogane a little too long to find the words to say whatever it was he would have said, though, because Fai began singing in a tongue Kurogane didn't know, his voice an awful toneless racket that slid like nails over a chalkboard, dragging from note to note. Perhaps Fai thought he could pass _anything_ off as singing if he just did it long and loudly enough. Perhaps he was genuinely doing his best, and his best was just bad. 

Whatever the truth, it hurt Kurogane's ears. He bellowed in protest and kicked out again, this time knocking Fai from his chair. 

Fai spun a little as he fell, up and into the pod's shallow ceiling. He came to rest, still caterwauling, against the overhead display, like a puff of obnoxious pollen floating amid the stars. The pod's trajectory didn't waver this time, and Fai made no move to sink back down or return to his seat. 

No, he was having fun at Kurogane's expense, and smiled, big and toothy, yowling on. His eyes twinkled, his whole posture mincingly friendly, as if to dare Kurogane to give chase, to lash out. 

Kurogane threw his empty bottle next.


	9. So just call me whatever

When they reached Mokona, and the escape pod returned to the ship proper, the small white ship was docked to a much bigger freighter. Sakura was waiting for them, working on a pile of metallic limbs and wearing a pair of welding goggles. She brightened immediately as they stepped out of the escape pod, caroling _welcome home!_

"We're back," Kurogane responded out of habit, shouldering a crate of fruit over one arm and carrying a bag of bread loaves under the other. Fai had picked up the second crate of fruits, and one of the three remaining bottles of rice wine, though he seemed to be sober by now. At some point when Kurogane hadn't been looking, too, he'd slipped off the sling on his arm. Kurogane figured maybe it was teraphs who had stunted healing, after all, and was mostly grateful not to be the only one able to carry things around.

"We bring gifts, as well." Setting down his own crate and offering the bottle of wine to Mokona's avatar, Fai glanced over Sakura's new project with obvious curiosity. "Is this from your brother-in-law?"

"Ah! Not exactly. I mean, he lent me the tools, but the parts were hidden away here on the ship!"

Sakura pointed with her wrench to a compartment right in front of the pilot's chair that now stood open, and Kurogane spotted a matching metal head lying there untended, for the moment. 

"What is it?" 

"I'm not sure! An automated pilot, maybe?" Sakura grinned, her huge green eyes hidden behind the even-bigger lenses of the welding goggles. "I'm excited to find out."

In the grand scheme of everything else, a person made of metal parts didn't seem especially weird to Kurogane, and he let it slide. There were more important things to worry about, and Fai looked troubled, too. 

"Well, what about your meeting with your brother-in-law? Will he be able to help?"

Sakura's antennae drooped down her back, and she puffed out one cheek, sulkily welding together a part of an arm that had previously been fractured, from the look of things. After a moment, she answered quietly, 

"Yukito thinks I should stay here while the three of you do the rescue mission. He doesn't want to put me in danger."

At the same instant that Fai said _he's only looking out for you,_ Kurogane scoffed _that's bullshit_.

They traded looks of wry surprise, and Kurogane wondered if maybe, just maybe, Fai's allegiance lay with Sakura more than he let on. Certainly Kurogane didn't think she was combat ready, but he also didn't think it would be safer for her to sit here in a nebula than anywhere else. His entire definition of what was safe had been drastically altered by this whole being-stolen-across-the-universe experience, really. 

"All right, let's say we all go on the mission." Fai said, and Sakura's face lit up. "Who are we rescuing? Where are they? Do we have a plan?" 

"Well...yes and no."

Kurogane had continued unloading the food they'd grabbed, and set down the last of it between the two benches where he and Fai had been catching the occasional snippet of sleep whilst aboard. He subconsciously crossed his arms over his chest, trying to intimidate more detail out of Sakura. He wasn't sure if it worked or she just wanted to tell them anyway, but she excitedly began to relay all the specifics of her meeting with the mysterious Yukito. 

"Yukito has been tracking the ship where we last had confirmed sightings of my mother and brother. That's, um, that's why we separated. Anyway, the ship! It belongs to the trade guild of Cephiro, and it doesn't leave the Cephiro home system for anything. If mother and Touya are still aboard- and there's a good chance they are- it seems like they're being used to power the ship. That's why I don't want to sit aside. I _have_ to help them!" 

"Wait." Kurogane glanced at Fai, then Sakura, trying to gauge by their reactions whether he was making the right connection. "You're saying that's _normal_ out here? You run ships on people's emotions? You just, what, strap in someone you don't like and suck ‘em dry?"

Sakura nodded guiltily. Fai didn't say anything at all, but the absence of his reply felt hollow and haunted, and told Kurogane plenty. 

"What the _fuck_ is wrong with this place?!"

It took Kurogane a moment to realize he'd been shouting, and a moment more to feel how his voice was ringing in the room. That _he_ was the reason behind Fai's averted gaze and Sakura's downcast, apologetic silence. It was too much: the idea that entire planets of people could condone such a thing made his blood boil and his hands shake. His heart was pounding, his ears flat back, and- _no, not here, not like this, not now!_\- he was barely managing to keep himself from shifting.

"Kurogane?" said Mokona, softly, breaking the tension with its tiny, tinny voice. The rabbit-avatar hopped up onto the control bank left of the pilot's chair, and locked eyes with Kurogane. He made himself clench his hands, and nodded, unable to give the avatar any words. He didn't know why now, after weeks in this unfamiliar space, he was suddenly finding it difficult to hold his neutral form. He only knew that he didn't dare shift when he was angry like this. He'd risk hurting Sakura or Fai if he let himself slip too far.

"Mokona wants to apologize. Mokona didn't mean to hurt Kurogane, but Mokona did."

He wanted to say that he refused to believe that the ship was truly alive, or could feel anything at all, let alone _sorry_. In fact, he realized, he wanted to be angry, because being angry was better than being terrified. Kurogane hated how little control he had over anything in his life right now. It was too much. 

It was _too much._

He grit his teeth, and rubbed his eyes with both hands, trying to banish the frustration and helplessness. It was buzzing in his chest, but he had a handle on it. He swallowed down the urge to fight, and took a deep breath through his nose. 

"Yeah," Kurogane said, when he was pretty sure his voice would keep calm. "You surprised me."

"And Mokona is sorry for that. Mokona didn't mean to harm anyone. But this is the only way we know to travel between the stars. A necessary sacrifice."

"Then you shouldn't be traveling between the stars yet," Kurogane growled, unable to keep the fury out of his voice. He could feel fur beginning to itch and sprout across his back, and bit his tongue.

"Mokona is sorry!" cried the avatar.

Kurogane laughed, incredulous, and couldn't make himself say more. If he did, he was going to lose his temper again, and he didn't want to do that.

In the silence that followed, Mokona dissolved from sight with a final, pitiful _sorry_, perhaps recognizing that its presence would only agitate Kurogane further. Fai had withdrawn completely, staring in the general direction of Sakura's scrap-heap project. For her part, Sakura seemed determined not to brush Kurogane's concerns aside. He watched her working through it, her antennae twitching as she muttered to herself, calculating various possible responses before she finally spoke up again, this time pulling off her welding goggles so they could look each other in the eye. 

"You're right. There has to be a better way. I just don't know what it is yet." She held up her wrench to emphasize her point, grinning madly. "But! I'm trying to figure it out! I promise, Kurogane. We'll find my family, we'll save them, and we'll find you a way home, too."

There was no real reason why he ought to believe her; he'd looked through the starmaps for hours and hours, while they were floating toward the nebula in the escape pod. Nothing had seemed familiar. Not one solar system had rung a bell. Not one star. But somehow, when Sakura said it, Kurogane found himself wanting to believe her. 

"Is that so?" he sighed, taking another deep breath. The fur on his spine still itched, but it wasn't spreading. "Well, I'll hold you to that. So, this ship. How are we gonna get aboard to find them, anyway?"

"I have a map!" 

The map was made of a heavy gray fabric, and big enough to have doubled as a rug on the floor. Sakura unfurled it, and pressed a finger to the center. That same glittering energy that sometimes flickered around her figure seemed to channel down her arm and into the fabric, where it pooled, licking and rolling in a wave of static. Slowly, a stored image rose from the heavy, conductive fabric. Sakura's hair fluffed out as she continued to concentrate on the map, her eyes unfocused. 

Fai shook himself, breaking out of his reverie and stepping closer to examine the image. It was a blueprint, of sorts; six layers of blueprint, detailing the entirety of the ship's design. 

"I've seen ships with this layout before," Fai said thoughtfully, squinting as he paused on the larboard side. "They're actually quite outdated, aren't they?"

"Right! It looks like it was converted to serve as a passenger transport after serving as a freighter. They make port on the second planet in the system, and don't go very far from home between missions. I can't tell if it's transporting prisoners or conveying passengers between local planets. There's a central chamber that could be used as a holding cell-"

"Or a fueling station, huh?" Kurogane muttered darkly. Sakura swallowed hard, and nodded in agreement. 

"That's a possibility we have to consider."

As they looked over the map, Fai reached out to tap one of the floors, dragging it until it had rotated almost completely to the opposite of its original orientation. From that angle, he pointed out a room that had been hard to spot amidst the many smaller rooms situated around it: large, suspiciously lacking the indication of a traditional door, and unmarked insofar as its intended purpose. 

"I imagine that any important political prisoners would be kept here, then."

Though he wasn't paying as much attention to the map as, perhaps, he should have, Kurogane was hung up on another detail, and decided to voice his curiosity aloud. He'd still not gotten much of a solid grasp on what had lead to Sakura's current situation, and he knew nothing about Fai's involvement in anything. It might not help him much, to know, but he had a strange feeling that he was missing something big. 

"Maybe I just don't have the head for intergalactic politics, but why'd he imprison his wife? His son?"

Sakura chewed on her lip, shaking her head. 

"I- I had thought, before we met the Witch of Space, that he was possessed. He certainly seemed _different_ after grandfather passed away, and it's not unheard of, for those who die with unfinished business to become shades, or specters. But if the Witch was speaking the truth, then…"

"Then there's no one but him to blame for everything, and you have no idea why he would do it, either." Kurogane finished quietly. He understood why Sakura was so conflicted about her father. Given her proximity to the situation, she wouldn't have been able to admit what she was seeing until long after it had happened. 

The three of them stared at the map for a few moments, silent, analyzing the structure of the ship as best they could. As Sakura was turning one of the levels on its side, trying to determine if she would have a straight shot to the central room cluster from its outermost hallway, Fai spoke up.

"I imagine you might not know, but your father's conquest was publicly opposed by the prince and queen alike. It makes sense that he'd relegate them to some kind of prison, I suppose." 

"Mother's health has always been fragile, so I hope not, but. I guess it doesn't matter." She set her jaw, determination gleaming in her eyes. "Because we're going to free them. Yukito wants to send the two of you in, but please, bring me with you? I can help!"

Kurogane wondered how expendable this Yukito thought he and Fai were. 

"_We're_ part of his plan? He's never even met us."

"Well, that's the next step. If you're willing to help, he wanted all three of us to meet on his ship before we proceed." Sakura fidgeted, looking worriedly between the two of them. "But...are you?"

"Don't be ridiculous. We'll help you, of course," Fai answered immediately, etching a melodramatic salute in the air and inclining his head to Sakura in some elaborate display of deference. Whether it held ceremonial meaning wasn't clear, but Kurogane got the impression that Sakura was as puzzled as he was. "Won't we, Kuro-rin?"

"Right. We-" 

Kurogane paused, and shot Fai a questioning look. Fai wore an expression of practiced and unconvincing innocence, and looked rather like he was having fun at Kurogane's expense.

"What did you call me just now?"

"Do you not like it?"

It hadn't even parsed as strange, at first. Kurogane supposed he didn't hate the nickname, but on principle, he didn't want to encourage...whatever this was. If it wasn't already too late. He probably should've let the first one pass entirely without reaction. Now he was never going to be able to get Fai to stop, was he?

He tried anyway: "No, I don't."

"Oh," Fai said with a plainly false smile. "I'm sorry, I just find your name a little difficult to say."

Kurogane glowered, feeling petty for rising to the bait and yet completely unwilling to back down, all the same. 

"If you can't say it right, don't say it at all, then." 

"What should I call you? ‘Hey you'?"

"Call me whatever." He turned to Sakura, trying not to see Fai's smug expression and completely failing. "So when do we meet him?"


	10. Because I have to believe that this

Mokona was a tiny ship, with barely enough room for one person to live there (if you stretched your definition for what constituted ‘living' in a place). While it was capable of sustaining three people, comfort wasn't a consideration, and they'd had to carefully navigate the limited facilities for sleep, for hygiene, for storage, even for preparing and eating their meager food supply. Kurogane had developed a bit of a new appreciation for the ship proper, floating in the escape pod with Fai for company and even less space to move about, but he still felt cramped there. 

Yukito's ship, _Yue_, was an enormous freighter close to ten times Mokona in size. 

The first of many weird elements about it was this: It was a tree-ship, grown entirely from a hardy plant capable of withstanding even the frigid chill of space. Its outer hull was coated in a shiny, waxy bark. Kurogane caught glimpses of the stuff through some of the fibrous membranes that passed for windows, in the ship's halls. Gray-green in color, it looked almost polished by its exposure to the vacuum of space. Both internal and external lighting came from extremities that were shaped like leaves, even if, Kurogane supposed, they must not serve the same function as leaves on plants from his home. Somehow, without soil or water, _Yue_ was a living, breathing ecosystem, able to traverse the vastness of space. Unlike Mokona, it seemed to be entirely naturally occurring, though both ships were technically alive. And unlike Mokona, no avatar-image appeared to greet them as they crossed from Mokona to the wooden walls of Yukito's transport. 

It smelled like cypress inside. The air was laden with spores, the walls coated in moss and fungi. Kurogane covered his mouth as soon as he'd stepped aboard, but neither Sakura nor Fai seemed to think anything of it. Kurogane wrinkled his nose and resigned himself to breathing in _whatever-this-was_, and tried not to sneeze. 

For such a big ship, it was curiously empty, with no sign of Yukito's crew as they traveled the corridors, following Sakura's lead. It wasn't just that they managed to avoid running into anyone, either; Kurogane wouldn't have been surprised if the relatively secret nature of their meeting required extra discretion on part of those whose loyalty might be in question. There was simply no sign of any other living being on the ship beside the three of them, no sound of other people moving. It was overwhelmingly still here, and a little cold, besides. 

He had the uncomfortable sensation of walking aboard a ghost ship. 

_Yue_'s average room wasn't tall enough for Kurogane to pass through doors without hitting his head. He kept having to duck every few steps as they walked past safety door after safety door, his only consolation the knowledge that Fai was in the same boat. Sakura remained blissfully unaware of their struggle, too short for even her alert antennae to brush the bottom lips of those doorways. 

There was one other presence here, a scent amidst the sharp wooden tang and the musty moss that didn't match Fai's faint cinnamon or the almost salty, sea-like scent that clung to Sakura. Kurogane couldn't quite place it, until they finally reached the room where Yukito awaited them. 

It was the same sort of smell as molten metal; acrid, sharp, and in close contact, eye-watering. 

Kurogane's first impression of Yukito was of massive, feathered antennae the same silver as his hair. He had more pronounced scales patterning his face, and four gossamer wings that trailed behind him like a cloak. Sakura might have occasionally crackled or sparked with her psychic aura, or whatever it was, but Yukito was radiating energy. It shone along his wings and chest, his arms and hands, and gave him a permanent, otherworldly radiance. 

He felt like a miniature moon, actually. Kurogane's skin itched just being in the same room with him.

"Welcome back, princess Sakura," Yukito said, with a warm smile that did little to conceal his worry. He glanced between his three visitors, and settled on Sakura again after a moment's pause. "Have your companions decided they would be willing to assist us?"

"Yes," Fai said. "Pleased to make your acquaintance, Diviner."

Though he gave no outward sign of surprise, Yukito's voice betrayed him, just a little:

"I'm sure that you give me too much credit, friend. My Sight is a pale imitation of emperor Reed's visions; or the princess's, for that matter."

They traded a greeting that Kurogane didn't fully understand, and he glanced at Sakura to see if she could explain to him what this business about sight and visions meant. If she'd noticed the exchange, however, she gave no sign. She had gone straight to the map table and begun studying the starmap of the Cephiro system, instead. 

"You are Fai, then?" Yukito asked. His expression still had never wavered, and he had a pleasantly inoffensive smile to rival the one Fai usually wore.

"Yes. And that is our visitor from afar," Fai said, mockingly gesturing toward Kurogane as if presenting him on a stage. 

"Kurogane," Kurogane growled, daring Fai to give him another nickname. 

"Right," Fai said sweetly. "Kuro-tan."

_Well,_ Kurogane thought to himself tiredly. _I don't know what I expected._

"I've heard about you from Sakura," Yukito said, as if Fai's needling had never happened, and motioned for Kurogane and Fai to come join him at the map table. "I still can't quite imagine what you must be feeling. From what Sakura told me, it sounds like your people have never traveled beyond their home star's system, is that right?"

The question was innocuous enough, and reasonable to ask, but Kurogane still felt uneasy. If he was out here for a reason, and not the cosmic whim of some space-bug with a bizarre sense of humor, he didn't want that reason to be _so a conquering force can invade my home using information I personally handed over to them._ While he was certain that Sakura trusted Yukito completely, the prickle of doubt across his spine told him not to say a word. 

"I thought we were here to discuss a rescue mission."

"Right! Yes!" Yukito turned to Sakura, and she pulled up a larger-scale version of the central quadrant in the map's display. "Now, I don't know for certain how long they'll be stationary, but the Rayearth makes a stop every six solar cycles at the second planet in the system. On average, they remain in their port for between eight and sixteen hours."

"Based on that planet's orbital and rotational speed, that means we'll have either a full night, or a night and a day," Fai supplied. "Night would be better if we can manage it."

"I agree. Since boarding will be our first challenge, I would suggest you make port there before the ship arrives. There's only one city planetside with facilities big enough for the _Rayearth_ to land there."

Sakura twisted her hand, fingers hooked into the projected map's image, and then pulled it toward herself. The map zoomed in on the second planet, though it didn't have any detail to show of the city they would be visiting. Kurogane was surprised to see that their destination was a gaseous planet. All of the important points marked on its ‘surface', then, were suspended in the upper layers of the atmosphere, where the gas was thin enough to permit life to form. The cities and spaceports were all situated on floating island-like continents, and far smaller than those he'd seen in his own experience.

"I take it the Cephiro system's peoples are part of the empire, right?"

Yukito nodded in answer, seemingly pained by Kurogane's question. 

"Unfortunately, yes. There may be those posted there to report any sign of the princess back to her father; he has been in pursuit of her for over a decade, now. There's quite a bit of status to be earned in helping him catch her."

"To say nothing of the promise to grant a wish," Fai said softly. "It will be very important to keep her presence concealed."

"Don't worry about me. I can hide just fine!" 

"Not from your father, you can't," Yukito chided quietly, looking disappointed. "Besides, the best hiding will be to stay out of harm's way and remain here with me, princess."

It looked like Sakura was about to leap to her feet in passionate defense of how much they needed her along on the mission, but Kurogane interrupted the gloomy tension before the argument could get any more heated.

"Forget about all that- what are you talking about? What do you mean, ‘grant a wish'?"

Fai laughed a little, but it was Sakura who answered, her voice still angry, even if the reason for it had been redirected. 

"My grandfather built a time machine, before he passed away. He had lost the woman he loved in battle with the _exarchs,_ and couldn't accept her death. He was determined to use the machine to turn back time, and change history."

"But," Yukito interrupted, his voice a bit stern. "Your father picked up that legacy. And in his effort to capture and use you, princess, to power that awful machine, he's promised to use it twice: once for his own purposes, and once for whomever might bring you to him as their prisoner. You _cannot_ go."

"_I have to_!"

Sakura slammed the map table with both hands and such force that the image flickered and tore, disintegrating into a thousand motes of light. She flinched in surprise, but didn't waver. After a moment, Yukito lifted a hand to the sparkling chaos of the fractured map, and gently took hold of whatever interface they were using, returning it to its previous state. 

In the silence that followed, Fai lifted one hand, tentatively, as if asking for permission to speak in as unobtrusive a fashion as he could manage. Yukito sighed. 

"Yes, Fai?"

"I understand we'll have a short window of time to board the ship. How big is the _Rayearth_? How fast?"

"Comparable in size to _Yue_, but their top speed is five-hundred umics, based on my observations. While I'd have a hard time keeping up, your Mokona can outstrip them by a significant margin, as I understand it."

"That's true." 

Fai chewed on his lower lip, leaning away from the diagram to take the whole thing in. Beside him, Sakura was still standing her ground, and Fai subtly stepped closer, showing tacit support. When she looked up at him, he winked at her while Yukito wasn't looking. 

Kurogane noticed, though, and decided to pick up the thread of their conversation. 

"You know Sakura's our pilot, right?" 

At Yukito's puzzled expression, Kurogane pressed a bit closer to the map table, edging his way over to Sakura's other side. 

"If we're going to need Mokona for the getaway back to _Yue_, we need Sakura piloting."

Fai nodded, and continued from where Kurogane had left off; if they both made a case for Sakura's presence in the mission, he didn't doubt they could persuade Yukito. The fact of the matter was, they were short on hands here. If Yukito's ship couldn't even pace this _Rayearth_ thing, that meant he was out of the action, too.

"Sakura can dock Mokona to their ship on an auxiliary hatch they aren't actively using. If she's close by, she can disengage as soon as we're ready to go."

"If we use an escape pod to leave the ship, that'll trigger an alarm, won't it?" Kurogane mused. "So if we can just meet her at that hatch, we shouldn't have to confront or fight anybody, either."

"Agreed," Fai said, turning to Yukito with a pointed smile. "I'd humbly recommend Sakura accompany us, your grace. Won't you consider it?"

Yukito seemed quite taken aback by their unified argument in Sakura's favor, but he didn't fly into a rage, or scold her for refusing to accept his suggestion. He only looked worried, and Kurogane was impressed when Yukito simply nodded and let Sakura have the map controls. 

"I can't argue that you're the person best suited for this mission, princess. But please, please be careful."

The rest of the meeting was considerably more productive, though they mostly discussed timing and location, and Kurogane had little to offer on that score. He lacked any particular insight into which docking hatch might be most likely to give them a secure and easy escape route, or how to calculate the timing between various stages of their plan. So, instead he studied images of the prince and the queen, and the layout of the ship as much as he could. 

Much as Sakura wanted to rush ahead, they had time on their side, and took advantage of that, resting aboard the _Yue_ before they set out. There was, certainly, a lot more room to sleep, even if there was a certain loneliness to the yawning, empty spaces. Sakura slept in a room that Yukito explained had been prepared for Touya's visitors, when he was staying aboard previously. Fai and Kurogane had their pick of a suite of empty, musty guest rooms. 

Kurogane was still debating whether to stick close by to Sakura's room in case of an unexpected ambush, or far away in case he accidentally shifted forms in his sleep, when Fai leaned close enough to brush shoulders with him, and said in an undertone, 

"If you don't want to sleep alone, we could always share a room. Take watches, you know?"

That small contact was surprisingly warm, almost pleasant in the chill of _Yue's_ dim corridors. Kurogane didn't reciprocate, exactly, but he didn't pull away, either. He gave Fai a searching look, trying to figure out if the offer was serious. If it was Fai, probably not, but Kurogane hazarded a guess at the intended purpose behind Fai's suggestion.

"You want to watch me sleep?" 

Fai laughed, one of those surprised, delighted laughs that meant he was glad Kurogane had decided to play along with him. 

"You caught me out, Kuro-wan! How very perceptive of you~"

Which, of course, meant he'd guessed completely wrong, and Fai was happy to let him labor under that misconception, rather than admit...what? That he felt as uncomfortable being alone aboard this ship as Kurogane did? That Yukito _seemed_ sincere, but that it was also suspicious that Yukito had lost track of the prince, despite apparently being his partner?

"Well, whatever your reason, I don't mind keeping first watch. Pick a room, and let's get some sleep."

Fai stepped away, entering a room at the center of the row they'd been pointed to, before Yukito himself had retired to his chambers. It didn't quite suit Kurogane's preference, but he shrugged and went along with it, taking up a seat in the corner opposite a very un-used looking bed. Fai sat on the edge of the bed, and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He clasped his hands together. 

He looked like he was trying to say something; like the words were stuck in his throat, but no matter how he tried, his mouth wouldn't move. Kurogane waited, and waited, and gradually fell asleep in the corner before the words came. 

He awoke hours later to realize that they'd forgotten to set a watch, after all. Fai lay in the bed, face-down atop the covers, silent, his breathing so measured and deep that he seemed at first to have died. Kurogane had, as he'd feared, begun to transform in his sleep, and ripped part of his tattered and, frankly, now-dirty spacesuit. With a sigh of irritation, he shifted back, until his coarse black fur had receded again and his hands and feet were no longer clawed. The thighs of his pants were still torn in three different places, though, and without his fur to protect him, he felt the cold much more keenly. 

Annoyed, he rose up, stretching until his back and neck felt a little less stiff and sore. When he approached the bed to wake Fai and ask to trade, he hesitated. The bed was certainly not the only one available, and they didn't seem to be in any danger, here. Most likely, he could have made himself comfortable in one of the others, up or down the row in this hall. 

Instead, Kurogane put a hand to Fai's shoulder, touching it only very lightly. 

"Hey," he said, keeping his voice barely above a whisper, in case Fai was too deeply asleep to respond. "It's cold."

After a moment, Fai stirred, enough to turn his head and blink blearily up at Kurogane, his expression questioning. 

"Oh. Oh!" Fai yawned hugely, and sat up, stretching until his spine gave an audible pop. "Time to switch?"

Kurogane nodded, biting back the urge to say _no, go back to sleep._ Instead, he stepped back, giving Fai room to clamber out of the bed, and take a corner for his watch. The bed was warmer than the floor had been, and Kurogane was tired. He lay down, closed his eyes, and listened to the faint sounds of Fai sitting and watching over him. 

It took a lot longer than Kurogane liked to finally drop off to sleep again. 

When he woke, Fai was waiting, and had apparently procured a change of clothing from somewhere on Yukito's ship, in the form of loose pants and a long, loose shirt that matched one of the images Kurogane had found of the missing prince, Touya. 

"Good morning," Fai said with a laugh, as if the words were a joke. "I noticed your uniform was in worse shape than mine and called upon our gracious host to see if he had any replacements to offer. You should've mentioned when it got damaged! I'm surprised none of us noticed yesterday."

"Ah," Kurogane muttered. "It didn't happen until I was keeping watch. But. Thanks."

He accepted the clothes, and changed in silence, trying to quash the sense of losing something. His uniform was unquestionably damaged, and would need to be repaired by someone more skilled at sewing than Kurogane was before it could be worn again. Still, it had been a piece of home that he was carrying with him. Wearing the absent prince's clothing felt strangely vulnerable. 

When he looked up, expecting questions, expecting Fai to at the very least tease him in some way about how long it'd taken him to change, he discovered that Fai had already left the room, and gone to wake up Sakura. 

All of their food was still aboard Mokona, so once they regrouped, they all agreed to return, eat, and get underway. Yukito joined them, this time, escorting them down the halls. As they were walking back across the hatch that bridged their two ships, Kurogane asked. 

"How do you manage this ship by yourself, anyway?"

Yukito seemed surprised by the question, and Sakura laughed, answering for him. 

"_Yue_ and Yukito are the same person. It's not like me with Mokona; he's always lived inside the ship."

"You- huh?" Kurogane stared, first at Sakura, then at Yukito himself. Yukito, at least, had the grace to look sheepish. 

"I thought he was a teraph, too? Is that normal for teraphs?"

"No, I'm not a teraph. I took this form many years ago, when first I met prince Touya." He smiled wistfully. "This was my way of making it easier for us to talk. I have a certain affinity for this appearance, because of that."

"Oh," Kurogane said awkwardly. "I guess that explains why you don't smell like anything."

Fai spoke up, though Kurogane wasn't sure if it was out of pity for Kurogane's floundering, or because that floundering had opened an avenue of questioning that Fai had been hoping to do anyway. 

"I've heard before that teraphs are one of the only races capable of interfacing directly with _kalir_ trees. I'm surprised you required a proxy to speak with him."

Glancing at Sakura quickly, Yukito answered, keeping his words vague. 

"The prince has a unique gift for other types of communication."

Whatever that meant, it seemed to satisfy Fai and go over Sakura's head; they bid Yukito farewell, and returned to Mokona. 

The rabbit-avatar was back, when they stepped aboard. She leaped into Sakura's arms, greeting them all with an excited cheer, and Sakura explained to her everything they'd planned, and where they were heading next. 

And Kurogane watched Fai, wondering how he knew so much about the imperial family.


	11. Trust

As they were waiting for the _Rayearth_ to arrive, Kurogane and Fai wandered the streets of the port, pretending at sight-seeing. Cephiro saw travelers often enough that they fit in, and nobody took issue when they lingered together in odd places. 

Sakura remained aboard Mokona, within communication distance but hidden from view in the middle of a thick, iron-red fog that hung below the city proper. Each hour, she sent them a cheery hello to check in, and updated them on her progress in repairing the mysterious metal man she'd found stowed in Mokona's hold. As of her most recent report, she'd reconnected his torso and limbs, and moved on to attempting to re-activate his core. It ran on some type of energy she'd never encountered before- not ‘love', as Mokona did- and so she was a little disheartened by the setback his unfamiliar systems presented. 

The sky on this world was always clouded and the air smelled like ice. It had been nearly six hours so far since they'd arrived, and Kurogane was getting cold.

"We should eat," Fai said, apropos of nothing, before Kurogane had even realized he was also hungry.

Naturally, he didn't like it one bit, and said so. 

"You mean _I_ should, huh? Or do they serve blood in bars around here, too?"

Fai's lips twitched, but he didn't look amused by the thought, and he didn't answer, either. Instead, he simply started walking toward one of the restaurants they had passed by earlier in their reconnaissance. And ordinarily, Kurogane would've let it drop; it wasn't as though he had much knowledge about the various species and cultures out here. For all he knew, drinking blood was perfectly ordinary for the people of the intergalactic Reed Empire. 

But he was hungry. And bored, and _curious_, so as he followed, he pressed for more information, ignoring the way Fai was avoiding his gaze and very clearly did not want to talk about it. 

"I haven't seen you eat once since the three of us met, actually. How are you not starving?"

"I don't need to eat all that often," Fai said in a tone that was as light as it was brittle. "I thought I had mentioned that before, Kuro-wanko."

Ignoring the nickname might've taken some effort, normally, but Kurogane was all the more intrigued by the obvious deflection. So, Fai didn't want to admit that he hadn't eaten in quite some time, that it might even be a problem for him.

"You did," Kurogane said, and caught the door of the restaurant they'd been approaching, leaning his weight against it to keep it shut, and prevent Fai from escaping his question. "But aren't you hungry?"

A miserable sort of expression crossed Fai's face, and a strange but _familiar_ dizziness came over Kurogane, just enough that he wavered, and let go the door to steady himself, putting a hand to his suddenly spinning head. Fai didn't take advantage and rush inside, though. He looked as out of sorts, in fact, as Kurogane felt.

Fai didn't answer until the sensation had passed, and left Kurogane's irritation and hunger both considerably dampened. Kurogane only wondered how Fai knew to wait; how he knew when whatever-it-was was over. 

"Yes. I am hungry, but now isn't the time." 

Before Kurogane could ask clarifying questions, Fai pulled open the door, and stepped inside. 

The restaurant, much like the rest of the planet, was lightly foggy and lit by faint red light. Those who sought sustenance could approach the cook who ran the place and either take some of what was already prepared free-of-charge, or offer currency or trade for a special request. Fai had rushed ahead while Kurogane was still making his way through the door, and grabbed a plate for them, motioning for Kurogane to find a seat amongst the other diners here. Neither of them had anything in particular to offer for trade, at the moment, and Kurogane was happy to accept whatever was on hand, if it meant he could take care of the ache in his stomach. 

He was less happy about Fai dismissing his questions, but he supposed he'd overstepped, and grudgingly took a seat by a window so he could continue to do his job and watch for signs of the _Rayearth_ pulling into port. 

When Fai reached the table, he was laden with a bowl of some stew-like substance, and a plate of grilled peppers and fruit that smelled delicious. He offered it all to Kurogane, and sat down across from him, silently watching as Kurogane ate. It was a little unnerving, but Kurogane let it pass until he'd finished the peppers and most of the stew. 

"What is it? You want to ask something, it looks like."

"Hm." Fai folded his hands on the table top, and continued watching as Kurogane began to eat the bits of grilled fruit, now that they were a little less hot to the touch. "Well, but it's a rude question, I think. So, if you don't want to tell me the answer, then you don't have to."

"All right."

Out the window, a small, fast looking ship pulled into port, and a single, harried looking creature leapt out and began unloading the ship's cargo. Kurogane pretended to watch the creature going about its business, and watched Fai out of the corner of his eye, instead. 

"Are there beings like me on your world?"

Kurogane considered the wording of the question, and chewed on it for a moment before trying to answer it. 

"Like you, how?"

"Disgusting," Fai said, with the ease of long practice, as if this was something he had habitually called himself for a long, long time. "Beings who must drain the life of other, better things, simply to survive."

It was not crowded or loud in the restaurant. Other people were seated here and there in spots around the place, enjoying the chance to rest or eat or talk, but their presence felt comfortably removed from where Kurogane and Fai were sitting right now. Fai did not raise his voice as he spoke. He acted as calm and unbothered as the rest of the people here, and that, more than anything, felt strange to Kurogane. So, he thought about what to say in answer, and finished the rest of his stew before he was ready. 

"I eat meat to survive. Actually, most lycans do. It's almost impossible for us to survive without it, biologically speaking. So, I can't really see how you're worse, or disgusting, or whatever. I have to kill other living things so that I can stay alive. And since Sakura eats meat too, it seems like that's not unusual out here, either."

Fai sighed, looking frustrated, but not entirely as though he hadn't listened. As Kurogane finished the last of his fruit, too, Fai drummed his fingers on the table's edge, and pursed his lips, thinking. 

"Suppose the living things you eat could communicate with you. That they could think, feel, reason. Suppose they knew they were-" He stopped, a hollow sort of sorrow in his eyes, and shook his head, trying again. "That you were going to eat them. And instead of killing them, suppose that you could keep them alive."

All of this, Kurogane thought, was sounding very specific, and not very much like a hypothetical situation. 

"Sure." 

"Suppose that you could feed upon this living creature who knew what you were doing, and they could tell you _don't_!" Fai's hands had stilled on the table top. He was gripping it now, his fingers digging tiny divots into the metal's surface. "_Stop_!"

"And you stopped?"

"No, Kurogane," Fai said in a harsh whisper, staring down at his own hands. With a concentrated effort, he relaxed his grip, and removed them from the table. He laced his fingers together and squeezed them tight, shoulders shaking with the struggle to keep still, keep calm, keep quiet. "I didn't stop. I couldn't. ...I was hungry."

For a moment, just a moment, Fai looked like he might pass out on the spot. Then he recovered himself, and returned to sitting there in miserable silence, his shoulders hunched, his story revealed. It was obvious to Kurogane that he expected to be castigated for it. 

And, that he hadn't learned anything from the experience, apparently. 

"Look. I'm going to use this bowl here," Kurogane said, keeping his voice level and low, as he picked up the sharp little knife that had been served with the grilled peppers, to help dice them up for his food. "And I'm just going to let out some blood into it."

Fai looked up as if Kurogane had struck him. "You-!"

"Shut up," Kurogane whispered. "What you do or don't do with the blood doesn't matter to me. But it's gonna be in this bowl. Got it?"

Then, before Fai could make a complaint, Kurogane jabbed his own thumb with the knife, just enough to make a cut that would dribble for a minute or two before it started sealing up. If he hadn't been a lycan, Kurogane supposed, it might've been much more inconvenient to do. As it stood, he saw no reason not to fill the bottom of the bowl, and when Fai reached out to his hand, Kurogane let him hold it, look at it, see that the wound was already almost gone. 

"I can't- I can't accept this." 

Even saying that, Fai was desperately drawn to the faint line of blood still left on Kurogane's thumb. His grip was like stone, cold and inescapable and terrifying, and a thrill of helplessness shot up Kurogane's spine as he subconsciously tried to pull his hand away and found that he couldn't move it at all. Fai stared down at Kurogane's thumb, his breathing audible and haggard, and he seemed unable to let go. Slowly, slowly, he pulled Kurogane's arm up (and Kurogane partway across the table), until his lips were touching Kurogane's thumb, and his tongue darted out, catching those droplets and leaving only the freshly healed line of the wound behind. 

Kurogane swallowed hard, and held perfectly still, and when Fai looked up at him he met that stare as evenly as he could, even though his entire body felt like a wet noodle. 

"There's more in the bowl, you know," he managed to say, wryly, his voice only wavering a little. It was enough, though. It broke the spell Fai was under, and he startled, releasing Kurogane's hand and looking down at the bowl instead, as if he had no idea what had just happened. 

Kurogane slumped in his seat, adrenaline pounding through his skull, and hoped he wasn't obviously sweating. He didn't speak again until Fai had picked up the bowl in both hands and drank it dry. 

"If you get hungry, or. I don't know, if you're still hungry now, I can help you." 

When he said it, he saw the doubt in Fai's face, and felt a little offended in spite of his best intentions. Still, he pressed on.

"You're not disgusting."

"No, of course not," Fai quipped dryly, sounding bitter. "I have an insatiable, murderous hunger for life itself, that's all."

"Is it really insatiable?"

He didn't get an answer to that. Fai glanced out the window, and abruptly stood up, heading for the door. Following suit, Kurogane saw that their long-awaited vessel had finally arrived. He gave chase, catching up to Fai just outside the restaurant and falling into step with him. Before he could pester Fai further, however, Kurogane heard Sakura's cheerful ‘voice' buzzing in his mind for their hourly check-up. 

_Hi there, Kurogane! Hi there, Fai!_

"Hello, my dear. Our persons of interest have arrived; shall we greet them?"

Fai answered in a pleasant tone, speaking aloud, though Kurogane felt the shadow of his projected, mental voice through whatever it was Sakura was using to communicate with them. While Fai's speaking voice had a light, mellow timbre to it, the presence of his mental voice felt strange to Kurogane. Far more vast and with a much brighter buzz to it than Sakura's, somehow. 

_Oh! Yes, right away! I'll dock in just a moment on their underside. If we can manage the rescue before they finish their business here in port, so much the better!_

"We'll keep you posted," Kurogane muttered, and glanced around to see how much security was posted in the street by the now-occupied docking point. There had been a steady patrol over the last few hours of three guards, but with the ship docking, an additional pair had made their way to the ramp where personnel were disembarking. 

While the two of them made comfortable on a walkway above the port proper, looking over the shipyard, the _Rayearth_ personnel engaged in an in-depth conversation with the security detail. After a few minutes, more guards arrived, bringing in tow a double-line of people dressed all in white, who walked with the slow uncertainty of prisoners. Though they were not bound, they clearly feared the security guards who were escorting them, and made no effort to escape as they began to board the _Rayearth_. 

"Any idea where they might be taking these people?" Kurogane muttered. He could see Fai out of the corner of his eye, watching the proceedings with an expression of dread. "Or what use the empire has for prisoners?"

"Could be something local," Fai said, though he didn't sound like he believed it. "But do you see their outfits?"

"Yeah, all the same color. That mean something?"

He could tell that the answer was ‘yes', but Fai was hesitant to give it, and when Kurogane glanced his way, Fai shook his head, saying only, 

"I can't be sure. We need to get aboard, first. Worry about them after we've done the rest."

"Fine," Kurogane sighed. "How are we doing that? Disguise ourselves as prisoners?"

"Too vulnerable. Besides, they probably know who they're bringing aboard. We don't look anything like those people down there."

The assembled prisoners appeared to hail from all over the galaxy, or at least from many different worlds, and certainly some of them could have belonged to a species similar to whatever Fai was, or superficially similar to a lycan, but Kurogane couldn't argue the point. While security at the main ramp was considerably higher even than they'd anticipated, however, there were several access hatches in view from their vantage above, here. With low visibility, they could even have jumped across, Kurogane supposed, without being seen. 

"All right, well. Not sure how to get there. If we jump, they'll hear us landing on the hull, no matter how good the cover is."

Fai looked first surprised, then intrigued, eyeing the rolling yellow and orange clouds that were hanging over the _Rayearth_, still clustered close from its passage through the sky. 

"I can catch you, if I go first. I have a certain knack for this."

That sounded dubious, but Kurogane supposed he didn't know anything about whatever it was Fai was. He nodded, signaling Fai to go for it before the weather could change and blow away their cover. 

Fai climbed up onto the railing, and leapt out across the daunting distance to the ship. Kurogane could only see him for the first few moments, and then he sailed into the thick, oily orange clouds hanging above the docking point. He held his breath, counting in the back of his head until he caught sight of a thin, tall figure standing atop the ship, barely visible amidst the fog. 

He couldn't tell if Fai was ready, but he didn't suppose there was a whole lot of time to worry about coordinating. Watching the figure, Kurogane waited until he could see it clearly waving for him to follow, and then climbed up onto the railing, himself. Objectively, he knew he could handle a fall of this distance, and wouldn't be hurt if he happened to hit the ship itself, instead of Fai catching him as promised. (At least, not by the fall, so much as the security guards who would likely shoot both of them if such a thing happened.)

In the heat of the moment, though, his lungs felt tight with the worry that he'd miss the jump somehow, and plummet off the edge of the city, falling down into the super-pressurized gasses and dying without anyone ever even knowing what'd happened to him. 

Kurogane jumped, and for an absolutely nauseous few seconds, was free-falling with no idea whether he had gauged the distance properly. 

Then he hit hands- arms, really- that snatched him out of the air, and felt a thin body stagger beside him, as they both steadied their footing against his inertia. Fai recovered first, and crouched down to pry at the hatch until it popped open. It was clearly meant for use only in zero gravity, and opened onto a corridor whose floor was some thirty feet below them. 

"Well," Fai said breathlessly, looking as uneasy as Kurogane felt. "Shall we start searching?"

The question didn't dignify an answer, and so Kurogane didn't give it one. They leapt down, one after the other, and turned left, once they'd gotten their bearings. 

While they had been hoping to access one of the outer corridors who looped round and in toward the center of the ship, they were in the second deck, not the fourth, as expected, and would have to find a staircase down to continue. Security was nonexistent inside the ship, with so many of its officers apparently busy boarding the prisoners. That was lucky for the moment, and let them travel the second deck without interruption until they found what they were looking for, and began descending to the third. 

Kurogane was on-edge in here. The air felt heavy in his lungs, as if each breath was bringing with it a pile of metal filings, and the interior of the ship was brightly lit, creating stark and blinding contrast between the fogging, foaming chunks of cloud seeping in from outside. _Rayearth_ was showing its age, apparently. Its ventilation systems were unable to handle the local atmosphere at all. 

As they descended to the third deck, Kurogane felt a sense of something not-right, a moment before the vertigo hit him again, this time on the bottom stair. He stumbled, crashing into the wall, and heard Fai's breath stutter behind him, mirroring his own confusion. 

"This isn't just a coincidence, is it?" he gasped, trying to steady himself. 

"No," Fai said. "It isn't."

That was all the warning Kurogane had, and it wasn't enough, and he was still reeling, trying to recover from the curious sense of nothingness making his head spin and his stomach feel like it was going to crawl right out of his body. Fai struck with a foot to the back of Kurogane's knee, dropping him to the floor instantly. He curled his fingers, and his fingernails shifted and grew, and grew and grew until they'd become long, dagger-sharp claws. 

Kurogane rolled out of the way, spinning and trying to regain his sense of balance, one hand pressed to the wall and one knee wedged under himself in a desperate bid to keep from falling face-first into the floor. He reoriented, facing Fai through the mist. 

Where before Fai's eyes had been an oddly familiar blue- the blue of the walls in the space station, the blue of the lighted stones Kurogane had followed to the center of the biodome- they were flat and yellow, now. He lifted one clawed hand, and spoke in an emotionless whisper, barely audible over the short distance between them. 

"I'll deal with you, first."

"What are you doing?!" Kurogane demanded, shakily rising to his feet. His left leg still hurt where Fai'd kicked him, and he ducked under a follow-up punch that left holes in the ship's wall behind him as Fai plunged his claws in, slicing through the metal as though it were only paper. 

Fai didn't answer him. He followed Kurogane's dodge, swiping with his other hand, then kicking again, this time striking Kurogane's stomach hard enough to make Kurogane drop to his knees. He tapped a claw beneath Kurogane's chin, and pressed it against the skin there just enough to threaten. 

Falling back, Kurogane let himself hit the floor and rolled on his side, grabbing Fai's waist to help balance as he scrambled back to his feet. He came up behind Fai and followed his momentum, running down the hall without looking back, a little annoyed at his continued dizziness. He shook his head, and tried to figure out what had happened to make Fai suddenly turn hostile. It was possible, even, that he was hallucinating this whole thing; perhaps the mists in the ship or even outside had caused Kurogane to start seeing things that weren't really there. 

Just as he was about to reach the end of the corridor, Fai slid in front of him, and elbowed him in the chest so hard he started to see stars. Gasping in shock, Kurogane felt a flicker of anger steal past the strange numbness that had overtaken him. 

"Hey!" he wheezed, raising his hands to block any further attacks. Fai gave no sign that he had heard, and Kurogane tried to speak up. "What's wrong with you? Why are you attacking me??"

"I can't allow you to warn the princess," Fai said simply, without any trace of emotion at all. 

This time, Kurogane was ready for the blow, and blocked it with his forearm. The sheer force of Fai's attack knocked him back a step, and the follow-up flew right past his guard, stabbing into his shoulder. Kurogane hissed, gritting his teeth in a futile effort to keep them from shifting, sharpening in the face of this unexpected danger. He was losing control. 

"Warn her about what?" 

Fai pulled his claws free of Kurogane's shoulder, and began licking Kurogane's blood from where it had trailed down them. Maybe the sight of that should have unsettled him more, but Kuorgane was finding it hard to feel much of anything, too. Even the irritation and fear he _should_ be feeling in the middle of a fight felt...remote. Almost like-

He dodged another attack, this time Fai's claws coming for his throat at full speed. Kurogane had to throw his back against the wall of the corridor, letting Fai sail past and swinging around behind him. It should've been enough to make his hair stand on end- he knew how close he'd come to having his throat torn out. The only part of him that felt normal was the urge to shift into something _big_ and _deadly_ and even the playing field, and it was getting incredibly difficult to ignore.

"Hey! What did you do to me?" Kurogane hissed, trying to muster up some anger. "Why can't I feel anything?"

Fai looked faintly surprised, and paused for a second. It was only a second, but it was enough for Kurogane to realize that they were both experiencing the same thing. 

"That wasn't me."

"Then hold off a second," Kurogane insisted. "We need to figure out what happened to us, just now."

He had a moment of hope that Fai would see reason, but then Fai shook his head, and began drawing closer again, taking slow, measured steps. 

"I know what happened to us. It doesn't matter."

Kurogane panickedly backed away, trying to keep up his momentum while also fighting his transformation. He could tell it was a losing battle; he felt his skin prickling with heat all over, and his teeth were getting too big for his mouth. He whined in the back of his throat, trying to reverse it with everything he had, until he ran smack into the door at the far end of the corridor. Fai was close behind, and pinned him there with another jab of his claws through Kurogane's shoulder. 

It was too much to juggle it all. Kurogane howled in pain, and grabbed Fai's wrist with both hands, yanking it away from his injured shoulder. He could feel a hot flash across his entire body, and the itching, almost painful sensation of fur bursting forth on his skin. He'd not had to fight for his life like this since he'd met Tomoyo, all those years ago; he'd hoped never to have to. But he was desperate, and Fai was relentless. He could feel his body growing taller, the bones of his legs and spine popping back into their proper place. His borrowed clothing didn't stand a chance, between being cut up by Fai's claws and ripped in two as Kurogane's body mass suddenly tripled. His tail burst free and his jaws shifted, stretching, changing to suit his needs. 

He'd smelled the weird, cloying metals on the ship before just fine; now they felt like tiny bits of fire against his sensitive nose, and he snarled in Fai's face, as much out of disgust over the smell as out of pain. Their strength was almost an even match, like this, but Kurogane had the advantage, and was able to shove Fai away and get a breather. 

Transformation was, and always had been, taxing. Here, now, it left Kurogane feeling energized, the adrenaline of the fight keeping him from feeling too keenly how deeply and utterly hungry he was going to be as soon as he changed back. His wounds were already healing, luckily, but he didn't doubt Fai's ability to overcome that challenge. 

Kurogane held up both paws, trying to speak as best he could in this form. 

"Wait! Wait, will you?"

And against all odds, Fai did wait, his expression finally showing a shred of emotion, in the face of Kurogane's new form. 

"Is- are you-?" Fai blinked twice, looking up at Kurogane with actual confusion, now. "Kuro-sama?"

"Yes! It's me. You were attacking me. Listen, I think someone used one of those fueling stations on us, somehow. I was having trouble feeling anything, for a moment. You-"

Fai's expression became somber, and he shook his head. 

"No. It was someone else."

At the thought that someone else was present, even now, watching their confrontation and affecting its outcome from an unseen location, Kurogane's fur stood on end. He could feel his hackles rising, and did his best to stifle the guttural, rattling growl that built in his chest. 

"_Who?_"

"The emperor," Fai said, as if this was an obvious fact. "He is waiting in his ship, hidden on the other side of the planet."

It took everything Kurogane had not to lose himself to the rage boiling in the back of his mind. He bared his teeth at Fai, trying to find calm again, to keep from losing sight of what was important. He knew there was something he ought to do, if the emperor was here, someone who needed to know, but he couldn't _think_ through the angry red haze-

"Sakura," he realized. "You're trying to give him Sakura."

For a moment, Kurogane almost thought he'd deny it; but Fai slowly lowered his claws and nodded, his mouth twisted in a guilty frown. 

"Why?"

"I have no choice," Fai said softly, though he sounded unconvinced. 

"_Why?!_" 

Their positions were quite reversed, now, with Kurogane storming one terrible step down the corridor at a time. Fai flinched back, but where Kurogane's struggle to survive had been frantic, Fai was resigned, and did little to resist at all. Kurogane loomed over him, close enough to stir his hair with each breath, teeth still bared and fists clenched tight.

"What could you possibly want bad enough? What wish do you need granted?" 

Fai shook his head and wrung his hands.

"I have no ambitions."

"Don't lie," Kurogane warned. 

Swallowing down whatever he might've said at first, Fai lifted his chin, meeting Kurogane's eyes for the first time since he'd attacked. Somehow, while Kurogane hadn't been paying attention, those knife-like claws of his had retracted back into his fingers, and his eyes had turned back to that familiar blue. 

He looked fragile, and exhausted, and completely defeated. Kurogane kept up his guard, just in case. 

"I'm not," Fai said quietly. "I can't. I can't have ambitions."

There was a sound, below them, and Kurogane twitched an ear, tracking it as it passed directly beneath their feet and on down the corridor away from them. When he was sure they weren't about to be interrupted, he answered Fai's nihilism with a huff of disagreement. 

"Of course you can. Anyone can. Everyone does."

"I can't because I'm not a person," Fai said, in a very small voice, like it hurt him most of all to repeat these words to someone whose opinion mattered to him. "I'm only '_Fai_.'"

Since he'd arrived in this part of space, Kurogane had seen quite a lot of things he couldn't explain. There were elements of the experience that continued to feel surreal and dreamlike, no matter how he tried to make sense of them. Most of the time, he felt woefully unprepared for what was happening, and had no idea how to react, or what to do. But this, here, felt familiar. 

He closed the distance between them, grabbed Fai into his arms, and held him tight. 

"You seem like a person to me," Kurogane said, as nonchalantly as he dared. He wasn't sure how well the gesture would be received, and part of him worried that the unexpected physical contact would startle Fai out of his stupor and send him packing. 

Then a shiver passed across his belly, and he realized that Fai was scratching one hand through the fur there. 

"That tickles," Kurogane complained without rancor. 

"It's so soft," Fai said, in a wondering tone. "Even though you look so scary, Kuro-myu."

He grumbled, lashing his tail in disapproval, but didn't try to pull away; and Fai was not deterred. While they embraced, he gave Kurogane's belly a long, hearty scratch, working his fingers deep into the fur and smiling distractedly. It was as if he'd never done something so pleasant in his life, and was only just discovering that he could be happy for the first time. Kurogane was troubled by the worry that, possibly, that was actually true. 

He held on just a little bit tighter.


	12. Is not misplaced

They stayed like that for nearly half an hour, with Kurogane holding Fai, and Fai in a trance-like daze, until Sakura's slightly anxious ‘voice' interrupted them with another check-in. 

_Hello, Kurogane! Hello, Fai! Um, it's looking like they're all done boarding their prisoners, from what I can see down here. How- How is it going? Do you think I should come in and help? Are you both okay?_

The gentle smile that had been occupying Fai's face drained away, guilt and self-loathing resurfacing in its wake. He didn't step free of Kurogane's arms, but he did pull his hand away from Kurogane's fur, as if Sakura might see them, somehow. 

"We're okay," Fai said tentatively, his mental voice steady, even though he looked like he was going to be sick. 

Before Fai could segue into a confession of his apparent allegiance to the emperor, Kurogane chimed in, concentrating as hard as he could to project his own mental voice. He might've left the talking to Fai in any other situation, but he had questions that were only for the two of them, right now, and he didn't want to miss his chance to ask them. 

"Nothing so far. Hang tight, check in with us again in a quarter of the time you've been doing, okay? Then we can regroup."

_Okay!_ Sakura's relief washed over him palpably, and Kurogane saw Fai's face crumple with a matching wave of guilt. _Talk to you soon! Stay safe!_

"Hey," Kurogane chided. 

"We should get out of here," Fai said, wringing his hands together and refusing to meet Kurogane's gaze. "It was all a trap for the princess, anyway. The prince and queen aren't here."

"Well, that's inconvenient, but there's still prisoners to free."

Just a little bit, Fai crumpled even further. He had probably never considered that they might still save the prisoners they had already seen. Or, perhaps-

"Are you really fine with going against the emperor?" 

It wasn't a nice question, but it was an important one. The answer would tell him, first and foremost, whether they had to keep fighting or could focus on salvaging their situation and work together, from here. Kurogane let his arms fall open, and Fai stepped out of immediate reach, a heavy sort of dread writ in the slump of his shoulders. 

"I don't know."

It wasn't quite cramped at his full height, but Kurogane felt his lack of mobility in the corridor, and considered his options, while Fai wrapped his arms about himself and seemed to struggle with finding an answer. 

As soon as he changed back to his usual form, Kurogane knew full well he was going to pass out. He would need rest, and plenty of it, to recover. Probably a few meals worth of food, too. So, letting himself remain in his full lupine shape was the most effective way to proceed, at least for the moment. 

He could probably squeeze through the doors here, and down the stairwells, but while he was in them he'd be at a disadvantage, if not precisely vulnerable. The guards aboard the _Rayearth_ had been armed with weapons meant for melee, crowd control; blunt, clublike things to harry their prisoners and keep them in line without killing. If he was right, and they hadn't been carrying projectile weapons as back-up, then he should be safe to barrel into just about anyplace aboard this ship, terrorize the guards, and assume nothing they could do would pose him much threat. 

It was a pretty big _if_. He didn't like how much hinged on that one unknown detail.

"It's not like you have to fight him right now," Kurogane pointed out, hoping to draw Fai back out of his unhappy thoughts, and into their current situation. "You can just choose not to help him capture the princess, for now. We can fight him later."

"It's not like we can just beat the Emperor, Kuro-sama!" 

Fai sounded scandalized. Though he lacked eyebrows in this shape to emphasize how much he disagreed, Kurogane did his best with what he had available, and narrowed his eyes. This was starting to sound like a challenge to his pride. If someone told him he couldn't do it a third time, he might well have to prove them wrong.

"You sure about that?"

Looking askance, Fai shook his head, putting his hands on his hips. 

"Honestly, you're half-right, anyway. I could- I don't see any reason why I couldn't choose to just conveniently. _Not_ deliver the princess to him."

It was also not really possible to smile in the usual fashion, but Kurogane could feel his tail slowly wagging, and wondered if Fai would notice, or understand the body language enough to know what that meant. Best not to leave it to chance. 

"Good," he said gruffly. "Now help me commandeer this ship and free the prisoners. There's no way they'd all fit on Mokona."

A strange tension that Kurogane almost hadn't realized was on the air between them eased, and Fai laughed a little, his brow furrowed and a pensive smile lingering on his lips. He looked better; still rattled, but better.

"I'm not entirely sure that's true, but it would definitely be easier to steal this ship than try to fit those prisoners aboard our tiny friend, anyway."

"I counted six guards earlier," Kurogane offered. "And at least twenty prisoners. Think that's enough to crew this ship?"

"There's likely more guards on-board, but yes. I think we could at least make it back to the _Yue_. First we need to escort the guards back out to the port proper, however."

Saying as much, Fai turned up both of his palms, and slowly, slowly, those same claws slid out of his fingers, impossibly sharp and strong. 

"I'll go down, you go up?" Kurogane suggested good-naturedly. "Then meet back here? We're pretty close to the core, I think."

Fai nodded his agreement, and turned to head back up the stairs. That left Kurogane with his half of the ship to clean, and he set about it with as much stealth as he could muster, when he was this big. Being quiet was easy; being gentle, though, was hard. In all, there were eight guards on the fourth deck, two on the fifth, and another eight on the sixth deck, four of whom were in the process of playing a dice game when Kurogane came upon them. 

He made short work of all eighteen, bashing heads together, putting on a show of bestial fury for those who simply panicked at the sight of him, and bodily tossing the last one out of the entry hatch, to land atop two who'd fled when their clubs made no notable dent in Kurogane's physique. Once he'd checked each of the doors on the sixth deck to be sure there weren't other enemies lurking in one of the side rooms, he closed off the entry hatch, and returned to the fifth to repeat the process. 

In the middle of the fifth floor, he heard Sakura's voice again, this time notably anxious. 

_Checking in again! Hello Kurogane and Fai! Please respond!_

Despite the distance, he was surprised to hear Fai's voice answering her, like the soft buzz of a hummingbird just behind his ear. 

_Hello, princess Sakura. We've altered our plan slightly. Please remain docked to the **Rayearth**._

"Yeah," Kurogane chimed in. "We're going to steal it instead, since there's a bunch of prisoners aboard."

_Oh, my! Can I help? I had time to finish putting together my metal friend, I could bring him with me!_

Considering the things yet to be shared between them, and the realization (however late it might be on his part) that lycans' ability to shift would have fallen under the category of ‘unfamiliar to the imperial aliens', Kurogane balked at the idea of Sakura coming aboard. Best case scenario, she might not realize it was him, right away, and get frightened. He didn't want to think too much about the worst case scenario.

"Actually, it probably would be good for you to pilot. Navigational controls are on deck one, so you'll have to work your way up there."

Fai added, _We'll handle checking the ship's core and making sure it can run. You just focus on getting us out of here._

That seemed to be enough for Sakura. She answered with a cheery _Okay! On my way!_ and then things were quiet once more. 

The fifth deck had one sleeping guard, but Kurogane jettisoned them from the emergency escape hatch on the deck, and called it good. No others remained on the fourth deck, even after he checked. So, he headed up to the third, and squeezed his way down the hall, until he reached the turn in the corridor they'd originally been searching for. He followed it to the end of the hall.

Here, there was a massive copper door, and Fai stood before it, staring it down like it might at any moment strike him, kill him. 

Hearing Kurogane, he began to speak, in a soft, aching voice; and Kurogane flattened his ears back along his skull, but he listened. 

"Once- once, I knew him. The original Emperor; before his grandfather passed. I don't think, um, I don't think the princess knows, but. I've been kept in the royal family since their inception. I was given as a gift to the first of the Reed line."

Kurogane faltered, trying to make sense of that. He couldn't imagine there'd only been one emperor in the history of the empire, considering its scope. But that meant that Fai would have had to be ancient. Older than ancient. Maybe as old as the ruins they'd visited on Magarha. 

He thought these things, but kept his peace. Knowing what he knew now, and still haunted by how many things he didn't know at all, Kurogane didn't want to risk interrupting. 

"I was made to fuel the empire, you know. A necessary sacrifice. Not just the ships, mind you, but the emperor, and their people."

Kurogane wanted to say that that was horrible; that it was unfair that Fai had been used in such a way; that he deserved better. He settled for growling, 

"No one deserves to be treated like that."

To that, Fai had no answer. He stepped closer to the copper door, and sighed, letting his claws retract once more. When they'd done so, he gingerly pressed against the door's control panel with one hand. It didn't budge. 

"Maybe the original me didn't." Fai glanced over his shoulder, and up at Kurogane. His expression was carefully blank. "I have an unfortunate allergy to copper alloys, and the like. I can't get past this door on my own."

"Move," Kurogane said; and when Fai had, Kurogane charged into the door with his shoulder. It buckled under the assault, then split in two when he charged a second time. He had to duck under the doorframe to pass through, and Fai followed him in.

It was an unpleasantly familiar sort of room: empty, but for a single chair. 

"I'm telling you this because the ship won't run without me." Fai said, while Kurogane was still trying to swallow down the urge to grab the chair in both of his clawed hands and rip it out of the floor. 

"No."

It wasn't that Kurogane had a better idea. It was just that he couldn't stand the idea that anybody had to sit in that horrible chair to get them anywhere. But two small hands touched his right wrist, and smoothed over his fur, and Kurogane lowered his head until their foreheads touched. 

"No," Kurogane whispered. 

"He's been following us this whole time, Kuro-sama. Feeding on me. Or, I thought it was just me, but somehow he's using you, too, isn't he?" 

Rather than answer, Kurogane looked about the room, hating its sterile white walls and its empty space. It felt like someone had tried to make a visual representation of how utterly _nothing_ it felt to be sitting in such a chair, out of cruel symmetry, perhaps. 

He said, 

"Can we outrun him?"

"Not forever. But today?" Fai nodded, and kissed Kurogane's nose, wrinkling his own in surprise at how cold and wet it was. He wiped his mouth, and Kurogane huffed softly, laughing in spite of the grim situation. "Let me do this, Kuro-sama. It's what I was created for; it's why I've been passed into so many new bodies, over all this time."

His mind was racing, but Kurogane kept coming up blank every time he tried to find another way. The seconds slipped into minutes, and Fai walked over to the chair, making ready to suit action to words. 

_Okay! I've made it to the navigation chamber!_ Sakura announced. _We don't have much in the way of power, right now, though. I'm not sure we can make it out of port._

Fai shook his head, muttering under his breath: _that's what the prisoners were for, I'd bet._

"Don't worry about that, we'll find a solution. When you have the power you need to break orbit, do it. We'll be ready."

_Got it!_

Kurogane wished he was small enough to stand between Fai and the chair. But Fai was already sitting down, and there wasn't time to say everything he wanted to say. So instead, he laid down beside the chair, and put his head in Fai's lap, crooning in dissatisfaction. 

With his left hand, Fai pet the fur behind Kurogane's ears. He rested there, his fingers curled in, not quite scratching. 

"This isn't over," Kurogane rumbled, the words a plea as much as they were a promise. 

And then, Fai activated the ship's core.


	13. After all

In the yawning emptiness of hungry, endless light, he was suspended  
stretched  
seared  
and strained almost to breaking.

But the light faded before he did, leaving him dazzled and whole. 

While his vision was still spotted and blurry, he felt a hand in his hand, and gave it a curious squeeze. The fingers were not furry, as he'd remembered, but they were warm where he was cold, and they squeezed back. 

"Don't be an idiot," said a familiar voice, when he was able to ask why he'd been released, why he was no longer strapped in to the ship's core as it leeched the life out of his mind.

"But I am not your friend," he said sadly.

"Don't lie, either," said the voice, and the hand holding his hand lifted it up until warm lips met the back of his palm in a scalding, scolding kiss. "You're Fai, aren't you? Stop being ridiculous."

"Then...who is 'Fai'?"

A great heavy sigh heaved from the voice at his side, and then arms enfolded him, pulling him close enough that he could feel the dull thud of another heart, beating close to his. When the answer came, the voice was rough with a fond exasperation, and the hand not holding Fai's tousled his hair. 

"He's a troublesome guy who makes others worry about him. But, surprisingly, he's very kind."

Something heavy welled up in his throat, and for a moment, Fai found it hard to breathe. He swallowed it down, and shook, his eyes stinging.

"You certainly speak with confidence."

"Yeah, well. You're a good person." 

As the _Rayearth_ and Mokona flew on toward the Cat's Eye nebula, Fai turned those words over and over in his mind. What did it mean, to be a good person? Not just to be a person, in fact, but a good one? He worried. He wondered, too, if these were words that he would be able to live up to. Since he could first remember, he had yearned for the chance to be seen as something other than a tool by those who'd created him. It had never occurred to him that he could leave his creators behind. He hadn't even thought it was an option, right up until the moment Kurogane had questioned it. He knew full well there would be consequences to his choice, possibly even death or danger coming his way, as a result of severing his ties with the emperor. (As a result of siding with his friends.) But miraculously, he wasn't the slightest bit scared. 

For the first time in his intolerably long life, he felt hopeful: to be alive; to be himself; and to face the uncertainty that the future and freedom held for them all.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading this little story! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Here is the 'poem' of the chapter titles, all combined now that the story is finished:
> 
> Before the message I was lost  
And I don't know anything, but I feel like I can trust you  
Though I regret how much, sometimes  
I want to know you, even your dreams  
So just call me whatever, because I have to believe  
that this trust is not misplaced, after all.
> 
> [And, if you are reading this before the voting period ends on 9/30 in 2019, please consider popping over to the [KuroFai DW community](https://kurofai.dreamwidth.org/) to check out this and all the other entries for the 2019 KuroFai olympics, and rate your favorites!]


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